While U.S. sanctions have effectively locked Huawei out of several Western markets, its cloud division continues to thrive in Southeast Asia.

Speaking at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) AI Summit in Malaysia this week, Aka Dai, director of Huawei Cloud Marketing, said the firm has seen a 30-fold increase in demand for its services over the past five years, with annual market growth surpassing 40%.

"This region is not just a dynamic growth engine. It is a land of pioneers, eager for innovation," Dai said, adding that the cloud provider now supports public services, financial institutions, and carriers across the region.

Huawei’s regional focus marks a strategic pivot following years of Western restrictions. The firm has been subject to U.S. sanctions since 2019, with allied nations following suit by restricting or banning Huawei equipment from their telecom networks over national security concerns.

The firm’s cloud division has instead doubled down on domestic and regional markets in Asia. The firm’s presence in ASEAN is no different, supporting demand for cloud services across nations like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, while also snapping up regional market share from Western cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Huawei Cloud has operated in ASEAN since 2018, with Dai claiming it was the fastest-growing cloud provider in the region. Huawei Cloud operates five cloud regions in the territory, along with 17 “availability zones” to provide low-latency network performance for local users.

Among regional wins, the cloud provider counts the Thai government as a customer, with Huawei Cloud’s stack supporting its "Cloud-First" national digital transformation project. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, Dai said that Huawei has trained some 54,000 individuals across 49 institutions to boost regional talent, with further plans to upskill 30,000 in AI in the next three years.

Huawei Cloud’s further push into Southeast Asia came after the vendor reported CNY 68.8 billion ($9.5 billion) in revenue in 2024. Globally, its network covers 34 regions and 101 availability zones, serving customers in over 170 countries.

Huawei's success in the East doesn't mean it's not making strides westwards, with the firm reporting recent growth in markets including Europe, Latin America, and Africa. By the end of 2024, the cloud provider said it has worked with partners to serve more than 6,000 enterprises in Europe, with cloud regions covering key markets like Ireland and Türkiye.

It’s not just ASEAN nations taking notice of Huawei Cloud of late, either, with the vendor recently receiving recognition from Gartner as a “leader” in its Magic Quadrant ranking for container management.

While at the tail end of the leader rankings, Huawei Cloud's rapid technological development was lauded by Gartner, which noted the Chinese vendor was "narrowing the technological gap with other leaders in this Magic Quadrant."

However, the firm noted that geopolitical tensions had severely hampered Huawei Cloud’s geographical reach, along with its ability to access high-end hardware like AI accelerators.

Huawei Cloud has sought to push past the sanctions with its own AI hardware, the Ascend 910C, which forms the basis of its Nvidia GB200 NVL72 rival, dubbed CloudMatrix 384.

While it features five times more Ascend chips than there are Blackwells in the NVL72s, the CloudMatrix rack-scale AI servers house hardware that’s considerably underpowered by comparison.

Gartner's container report noted concerns about the hardware behind its container service, suggesting Huawei’s Ascend alternative poses the potential to “increase the risk of interoperability.”