On January 29th 2020, the Jack Ma Foundation (JMF) announced the donation of USD 14.28 million to support the R&D of COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering each received USD 2.86 million for vaccine research and development. The remaining fund will be used to support leading institutes and researchers home and abroad in COVID-19 research.

"We all know that although researchers have been working hard and sparing no effort to develop a vaccine, it will not be easy to get the vaccine from the research and trial stage to public use. While we hope that the epidemic will be completely controlled before the vaccine comes out, we also know that the fight between human beings and viruses is a long road – one which requires patience and experience, as well as more confidence and hope. The Jack Ma Foundation will do its best to provide more help for the development and accumulation of medical science." Jack Ma, Founder of JMF said.

Jack Ma called on all researchers and research institutions to work together to leverage more resources, and believe in the ability of people around the world to overcome the disease. In addition, Alibaba Group announced that the computing power needed for developing vaccines and new drugs will be provided to research institutions free of charge.

In the future, Alibaba Cloud also plans to discuss cooperation with various partners to develop big-data enabled smart national early warning system for respiratory diseases, cloud-based research platform on infectious respiratory diseases, and information-sharing system for research and best practice on respiratory disease treatment, in an effort to improve early warning and information sharing.