Alibaba Cloud founder on how AI can unlock human potential

Long before artificial intelligence became the next big thing in the tech industry, Wang Jian was crafting the foundational infrastructure that would eventually power it. In 2008, he joined Alibaba Group Holding as chief architect and founded Alibaba Cloud in 2009, convincing the company’s leadership to invest heavily in building a cloud computing infrastructure from scratch.

Today, Wang’s purview has expanded considerably. As an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he is also a member of the National Engineering Laboratory for Cloud Computing and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).