Jack Ma-Backed Fintech Giant Has an AI to Manage Your Company’s Money
Ant International is using its vast data trove and AI engineering expertise to muscle into the overlooked yet lucrative world of global cash management.
On a big sales day, you’ll find Kelvin Li in a crowded office packed with screens. From here, his team monitors billions of dollars in real-time cash flow as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s e-commerce platforms dispatch everything—whether robot cleaners, cherries or pianos—across the world. On one wall, an image of a thundercloud streaked with lightning bolts is overlaid with these words: “Strategy is forged on the battlefield.”
The intense atmosphere isn’t only about making sure sales go well. Such events are also a prime opportunity for Li, a senior executive at the global arm of Alibaba’s financial-tech affiliate Ant Group Co., to train the artificial intelligence model it uses to predict where, and in what currency, the company will want cash. As the day unfolds, engineers are on hand to look for any deviation in demand from the forecasts and alter the code for next time. Currently, Li says, the model can forecast the company’s foreign currency needs with 90% accuracy, allowing it to pre-position cash and optimize the once costly and time-consuming process of converting and wiring money across borders.