Huawei to invest $100M in APAC start-ups

Huawei announced its plan to invest US$100 million in startup support at the inaugural HUAWEI CLOUD Spark Founders Summit, which was recently held in Singapore and Hong Kong. Huawei said the investment would go towards its Spark Program in Asia Pacific region including the Philippines, which aims to build a sustainable startup ecosystem over the next three years.

Huawei has been helping Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand build their startup hubs. At the summit, Huawei also announced the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, as four additional startup hubs – in with the overarching aim of recruiting a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and shaping 100 of them into scaleups.

Huawei also launched its Cloud-plus-Cloud Collaboration and Joint Innovation Program, to further ramp up its support for startups around the world. Huawei will devote ongoing efforts and leverage its complete business portfolio in the cloud-plus-cloud collaboration space to foster technological innovation, global and local services, and business ecosystems, accelerating the growth of startups.

Three additional initiatives under the Asia Pacific Spark Program were launched: The Spark Developer Program, which aims to nurture a developer ecosystem powered by HUAWEI CLOUD in the Asia Pacific region; the Spark Pitstop Program, designed to onboard and support startups on HUAWEI CLOUD to accelerate product development; and the Spark Innovation Program (SIP), focused on facilitating enterprise innovation through the Spark startup ecosystem.

Zhang Ping’an, CEO of Huawei’s Cloud Business Unit, noted, “Since its launch in 2017, HUAWEI CLOUD has been the world’s fastest-growing cloud, and has driven the growth of countless startups. Last year, we launched the Spark Program in Asia Pacific. Through this program, we are working with local governments, leading incubators, well-known VC firms, and top universities to build support platforms for startups in many regions. Now 40 startups are participating in our program.”