Huawei is set to launch a new local cloud service in Egypt next month.
First reported by the South China Morning Post, the Chinese tech giant is also planning to develop an AI cloud computing center in Hong Kong, its first outside of mainland China.
The new cloud region in Egypt will add to Huawei's 85 cloud availability zones, spread across 30 regions.
The company is the second largest cloud provider in China, and has been steadily increasing its global presence. Last year, it launched new cloud regions in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which was located in an STC/Center3 data center in Riyadh.
Huawei is also developing third availability zones in both Brazil and Mexico. The Brazilian region is expected to go live in 2024.
It is unclear which data center the Egypt cloud region will be hosted in. In 2019, Huawei had shared plans for a cloud data platform that would be hosted in a Telecom Egypt data center in Cairo. At the time, this was intended to be Huawei's first cloud computing region in Africa and the Middle East, but it appears that the company had a change of heart, and its first service in the region was Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which launched last year.
Elsewhere, Huawei lists several regions across China and Hong Kong; Dublin, Ireland; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Paris, France; Bangkok, Thailand; Singapore; Jakarta; Indonesia; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Istanbul, Turkey; Johannesburg, South Africa; Mexico City, Mexico; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lima, Peru; and Santiago, Chile.
Despite the global growth, many countries continue to deem Huawei a high-risk vendor due to its close ties to the Chinese government. The US and UK are among those to have banned its equipment from their networks.
In addition to the new cloud region, Huawei has also shared plans for an AI cloud computing center in Hong Kong. This will be the first outside of mainland China, with the company already having developed such facilities in Gui'an, Ulanqab, and Wuhu, from which customers can access the Huawei Cloud Ascend AI service with ready-to-call AI models.
Jacqueline Shi, president of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service, said: "At Huawei Cloud, AI is a key strategy. We're building a solid cloud foundation for everyone, for every industry, to accelerate intelligence."
The company has its own generative AI model named Pangu, the third version of which was launched in July 2023.
