Alibaba Cloud Announces Further Strategic Investment in ZStack, Acquiring a Controlling Stake

Alibaba Cloud recently announced the completion of a further strategic investment in ZStack, thereby acquiring a controlling stake. The two companies will leverage the “Apsara + ZStack” full-stack ecosystem to create a standardized and accessible integrated solution for cloud-edge computing. This partnership will make cross-platform cloud services as simple and easy to use as installing standard software, ensuring enterprises have a completely consistent experience whether they are accessing large-scale computing power from the remote cloud or deploying smaller computing clusters on-premises.

Founded in 2015, ZStack specializes in cloud computing infrastructure software, helping enterprises build and manage hybrid clouds and intelligent computing centers for the AI era. It is recognized as a national-level “Little Giant” enterprise for its specialized and innovative expertise.

Apsara Enterprise Edition + ZStack: Forging a New Full-Stack Ecosystem for Cloud-Edge Integration

As the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises enters a more advanced stage, the demand has shifted from fragmented IT systems to integrated solutions that offer unified management and flexible deployment. In this landscape, Alibaba Cloud and ZStack are highly complementary.

Alibaba Cloud’s self-developed Apsara Enterprise Edition supports diverse chip architectures and excels at large-scale computing resource management, massive data processing, and intensive AI model training. ZStack, on the other hand, is renowned for its lightweight and standardized approach, enabling the rapid deployment of powerful computing capabilities to the edge—to office buildings, factory floors, or even base station sites.

Through this collaboration, the two parties have jointly built an industry-leading, full-stack cloud infrastructure solution that spans from hyperscale data centers to small edge nodes. This solution provides enterprises with a complete, smooth, and efficient pathway to evolve from traditional virtualization architectures to the cloud. It seamlessly extends powerful computing capabilities to where they are needed most, making computing power accessible on-demand, like a utility such as water or electricity.

Real-World Application: AI-Powered Inspection Project Demonstrates Centralized Training and Edge Inference

The advantages of this “cloud-edge integrated” architecture have already been proven in real-world applications.

In an AI-powered video inspection project for a major electric power group, the traditional approach of transmitting all inspection video back for analysis was slow and extremely bandwidth-intensive.

To address this pain point, the new solution established a tiered architecture. The ZStack edge platform was deployed at municipal-level nodes, achieving real-time image transmission with latency under 15ms. This platform also supports local data storage for 3 to 6 months for preliminary analysis. At the provincial network level, Alibaba Cloud’s central cloud was deployed to aggregate key data for intensive AI model training and to distribute the latest algorithms to the edge in real time.

This “centralized training, edge inference” model not only ensures a rapid on-site response but also generates significant savings on hardware and bandwidth costs. By leveraging the powerful computing capabilities of the central cloud, the project’s overall efficiency has increased severalfold.

Currently, ZStack serves over 5,000 customers in more than 30 countries and regions, with mature global delivery capabilities. Combined with Alibaba Cloud’s vast ecosystem resources and technological advantages, this partnership is set to bring the benefits of standardized cloud computing services to more enterprises worldwide.