Tencent Cloud sounds the horn for overseas expansion in 2025

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Wang Xiaojun

In the wave of Chinese enterprises going overseas, "going overseas" has also become an important strategy for Tencent Cloud. To seize market opportunities, Tencent Cloud is accelerating the construction of overseas infrastructure and has sounded the horn for going overseas by 2025 at the beginning of the new year.

On February 9th, Riyadh time, at Saudi Arabia's annual technology event LEAP2025, Tencent Cloud officially announced the construction of its first data center in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia. At the same time, in response to local industrial innovation needs, Tencent Cloud plans to invest over $150 million in infrastructure, resources, and related investments in the Middle East over the next few years to promote digital economic innovation in the region.

The announcement of the construction of the first data center in the Middle East marks a new stage in Tencent Cloud's international development.

It is reported that the data center in Saudi Arabia is expected to be operational by 2025 and will adopt a dual availability zone layout, providing high-quality elastic computing, storage, security, AI, and other cloud services to customers in the Middle East and surrounding regions, helping enterprises and organizations in the region achieve digital transformation.

At the same time, to strengthen local digital infrastructure, resource integration, and related field construction, Tencent Cloud estimates that it will invest a total resource value of over $150 million in the coming years.

"Putting half of our life into our partners" is in Tencent Cloud's DNA, so on the road to going overseas, Tencent Cloud also relies on the support of its partners.

At this year's LEAP2025, Tencent Cloud also reached deep cooperation with its global partners YZ-Intelligence, MiniGame, China Telecom, and others, laying a solid foundation for market growth in the Middle East.

Hu Dan, Vice President of Tencent Cloud International for the Middle East and North Africa, stated at the summit: "We are very pleased to grow together with Saudi Arabia. The construction of the Saudi data center will strengthen our support for local digital transformation capabilities. We look forward to continuously promoting industrial innovation by further enhancing Tencent Cloud's cloud services in the Middle East."

Middle Eastern countries are accelerating the promotion of economic transformation in the "post-oil era," with strategies such as Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" and the UAE's "2071 Centennial Plan" focusing on new energy and sustainable development as core objectives.

Against this backdrop, the Middle East has become a strategic hotbed for Chinese enterprises going overseas, especially showing significant growth in fields such as new energy, digital economy, and e-commerce.

In recent years, Tencent Cloud has also made extensive layouts in the Middle East.

For example, the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism partnered with Tencent Cloud to create a digital virtual image "Khalifa" using smart human technology. The popular Middle Eastern social software Lightchat relies on Tencent Cloud's real-time audio and video (TRTC) to provide users with low-latency, stable, and high-quality audio and video services.

In addition, BYD uses Tencent Meeting to connect six continents and over 30 industrial zones, meeting the multinational collaboration needs of automotive companies under global layout. Last year, Tencent Cloud also partnered with regional leading multinational operator Zain Group's Zaintech and global gaming technology company PlaysOut, accelerating the promotion of regional digital transformation It is worth mentioning that in recent years, Saudi Arabia's goal is to become a global hub for gaming and esports, and the 2025 Esports World Cup (EWC) is actively being prepared, with the participation of Tencent Cloud undoubtedly providing a stronger technical backing.

Tencent Cloud has been focusing on the overseas market since 2016 and has now built a global cloud infrastructure, operating 58 availability zones across 21 geographical regions worldwide, with over 3,200 acceleration nodes, covering more than 30 fields including finance, general internet, media, gaming, and e-commerce.

Last year, Tencent Cloud clearly proposed three main growth avenues: AI, going overseas, and integrated innovation, and for the first time disclosed a panoramic view of going overseas covering seven major scenarios.

Specifically, Tencent Cloud's enterprise overseas digital solutions panoramic view includes cloud-native, audio and video, edge acceleration, big data and database, security and compliance, and other technical and product capabilities, covering global practices in seven major industries: gaming, social entertainment, cross-border e-commerce, consumer electronics, fintech, online education, and automotive travel.

With a new wave of Chinese enterprises going overseas, Tencent Cloud's international business has maintained double-digit high-speed growth over the past three years, currently serving over 10,000 overseas customers across more than 80 countries and regions, and is becoming a new growth engine for Tencent Cloud.

Li Qiang, Vice President of Tencent Group and President of Enterprise Business, revealed earlier this year that in addition to serving Chinese enterprises going overseas, Tencent Cloud is increasingly serving local customers in regions such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Latin America.

To take the lead in this wave of going overseas, further accelerating the construction of overseas infrastructure is undoubtedly one of Tencent Cloud's important tasks ahead