The 5th BEYOND Expo 2025 wrapped up at The Venetian® Macao's Cotai Expo after delivering a packed program of events that brought to life its vision of "Empowering Asia, Bridging the World". Following four days of talks by tech leaders and visionaries, the Expo closed with the finals of Fund at First Pitch and a fireside chat with Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai, illustrating the Expo's commitment to supporting tech innovation in Asia. This year's BEYOND Expo attracted more than 800 companies, 800 investors and 25,000 visitors, across sectors from AI, HealthTech and Clean Energy to Robotics and SportsTech, making it the biggest BEYOND Expo yet and one of the largest annual pan-Asian technology gatherings.
In a fireside chat with BEYOND Expo Co-Founder Jason Ho, Alibaba Group Chairperson Joe Tsai shared his views on Chinese companies going overseas, the challenges of doing business in the current business climate and the role of sport in global entertainment. He emphasized the importance of trust in business as part of a company's mission. "Trust is built up over time. It's very difficult to establish trust overnight. It's all about people working together to achieve a goal. I think it's easier if you have a common goal that you're aiming for, then you can work on the details of establishing that trust. At Alibaba, from day one, we had a mission. The mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere because we wanted to help small businesses to use the internet platform to aspire globally. And that's something that stayed true to us even today. So, our mission 26 years ago is the same mission today."
He also highlighted how there are benefits to being a Chinese company but localization and cultural understanding remain key to success. "China today is recognized globally, especially in technology. People do look to China when it comes to AI, consumer internet, and cloud computing. China is definitely a heavyweight player in the global market, and for Alibaba being in the Chinese market because approximately 80%+ of our revenues still come from China. We do get recognized globally because China is a big country and a very important country in the whole global technology race."
