Jack Ma-founded Ant Group focuses on blockchain products as firm’s financial services struggle

Ant Group, founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, is changing its business alignment by venturing into the blockchain space amid ongoing regulatory pressure that has impacted its financial services.

In particular, the company has launched a blockchain storage engine as part of the ongoing restructuring process, intending to shift to hard tech space, the South China Morning Post reported on November 4. 

Under the new product line, Ant Group Digital Technologies released Letus, or Log-structured Efficient Trusted Universal Storage, to lower the storage costs for blockchain systems. 

“Letus can improve storage throughput by 15 times, reduce latency by 90 per cent, and save disk bandwidth and space usage by 95 per cent and 60 per cent [respectively],” said Yan Ying, technical director of AntChain.

The latest products added to other blockchain services released by the company, including 

AntChain Station, a workstation, Blockchain Transmission Network, a long-distance blockchain communications system. The company has also unveiled updated versions of different “platform-as-a-service.”

Future focus on blockchain 

Overall, Geoff Jiang, Ant Group’s Digital Technology Business Group president, reiterated that the company is focused on venturing more into the technology space to improve industrial collaboration to serve the economy. 

Notably, Ant Group, which also manages China’s giant mobile payment app AliPay, failed to share more information on its operation’s financial services. 

At the same time, Anti Group was stopped from launching its IPO in 2020. The IPO was halted amid increased regulatory pressure from the government following a crackdown on dominance by private tech companies. 

The company became a financial holding firm subject to China’s central bank’s oversight following an antitrust case. 

Consequently, the company, also linked to e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), is undergoing a state-directed restructuring process, but no development exists on a possible listing date.

Ant Group’s financial services have been impacted by regulatory change, having been forced to operate under laws governing the traditional banking sector.