Ant Digital Technologies, the technology arm of Ant Group, has chosen Hong Kong for its international headquarters in a show of commitment to artificial intelligence (AI) and Web3 technologies, the unit announced on Tuesday. The subsidiary cited Hong Kong’s role as a “bridgehead” for its global strategy. The company plans to establish joint laboratories with local universities and research institutes, it said in a statement on Tuesday. Ant is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post. “By establishing our international headquarters here, we reaffirm our commitment to the AI and Web3 industries,” said Zhao Wenbiao, CEO of Ant Digital Technologies. Hong Kong has been pushing to become a technology hub, with a particular focus on blockchain and virtual assets in recent years. The move reflects broader efforts by Ant, which was set up by Alibaba founder Jack Ma two decades ago, to step up the overseas expansion of its blockchain and AI technologies amid a global AI frenzy spurred by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and more recently fuelled by China’s DeepSeek. Ant aims to leverage Hong Kong’s role as a “robust financial ecosystem to advance Web3 and AI technologies while enhancing digital asset circulation”, it said. Over the past two years, Ant Digital has ramped up investments in developing AI models, building out core capabilities such as trusted intelligent agents, according to Zhao. In the Web3 sector, the company launched an asset tokenisation platform called “Two Chains and One Bridge”, which connects green assets with the international capital market, he said. The fintech giant recently garnered international attention for its ability to train large language models (LLMs) – the technology underpinning generative AI chatbots – using locally produced graphics processing units, cutting training costs by 20 per cent, according to media reports. Ant’s Ling team, responsible for LLM development, recently revealed that the Ling-Plus-Base model can be “effectively trained on lower-performance devices”, according to a company research paper. Although the team did not specify which devices it used, Bloomberg reported separately that the achievement was made using domestic chips. Ant launched its blockchain venture Zan in Hong Kong in September 2023, with the goal of building it into a critical technology provider at the heart of Web3, the way Google and Microsoft became vital cloud service providers for traditional industries in the Web 2.0 era, Zan CEO Cobe Zhang Chenguang told the Post in an interview last year. Zhao also highlighted Hong Kong’s strategic position within China’s Greater Bay Area, as the city combines technology, entrepreneurship and research resources. “Moving forward, we plan to further integrate Hong Kong’s industry, academic and research resources to drive collaborative innovation in digital technology throughout the Greater Bay Area,” Zhao said. Ant Digital has built a global network of over 300 partners and serves more than 10,000 enterprise customers, while its international business operations saw a 300 per cent revenue increase in 2023, according to company data. The latest announcement comes as Ant undergoes a sweeping reorganisation that started a year ago. Last March, the company announced a restructuring that would split its operations into independently run business units, including overseas unit Ant International, database operation OceanBase and Ant Digital, each with its own board of directors. Han was promoted to company president that month and CEO last month, succeeding Eric Jing Xiandong.