Ant Financial Hosts Technology Conference in Silicon Valley

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 20, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ant Financial today hosted the Ant Technology Exploration Conference (ATEC) in Silicon Valley, bringing together global partners and technology leaders to explore new innovations and technologies that further Ant Financial's mission of bringing the world equal opportunities. This was the first ATEC held outside of China, following the inaugural ATEC held in Hangzhou in October 2017.

The conference featured a diverse range of speakers from academia and industry to better explore the future of fintech, including Turing Award winner and MIT Professor Silvio Micali; Partner and Director of blockchain-based global payment platform Ripple, Emi Yoshikawa; founder of prediction market Bodhi, Xiahong Lin; and Director of JPMorgan Chase's digital channels, Umar Farooq, among others. Ant Financial's Vice President and Chief Architect, Hu Xi; Vice President and Chief Data Scientist, Alan Qi; and Vice President and Head of Ant Technology Labs, Geoff Jiang also participated.

Ant Financial's principal mission is to bring inclusive financial services to unbanked and underbanked consumers and small businesses globally. Ant Financial aims to work with partners around the world to forge new applications around its five core technology tenants: Blockchain, AI, Security, Internet of Things and Computing ('BASIC').

In his keynote address, Hu Xi said: "BASIC underpins everything we do at Ant Financial, so that we are able to better serve our users, and at the same time, open up platforms to the tech community to build on and create new applications to improve the user experience."

ATEC's focus on exploring cutting-edge technology brings together the world's best minds and addresses key goals and challenges, including future AI applications within fintech and wide applications of blockchain. 

As Alan Qi said, "We are truly excited about the AI research and development driven by extremely complex problems at the unprecedented large scale we encounter at Ant Financial. We have opened up the state-of-art financial AI platforms we developed - such as graph embedding technologies - to our partners and clients; the purpose is to use technology to help the financial industry improve efficiency, reduce cost and control risk."

ATEC 2017

At the inaugural ATEC last year, held in conjunction with the Alibaba Cloud Computing Conference, Ant Financial announced a range of new services and initiatives, such as an upgraded financial cloud offering and biometric identification services from independent subsidiary ZOLOZ to help partners build identity verification capabilities. Ant Financial also released blockchain capabilities to support open and transparent supply chains, particularly for food safety and imported goods.

Long-term Goals of ATEC

Ant Financial hopes that ATEC can serve as a platform to build a collaborative ecosystem for its global partners and technology leaders, as well as showcase and share Ant Financial's latest technological capabilities and developments. In addition to the Silicon Valley event, ATEC plans to host future events in Singapore, London and other major fintech hubs.

About Ant Financial 
Ant Financial Services Group is focused on serving small and micro enterprises, as well as individuals. Ant Financial is dedicated to bringing the world equal opportunities through building a technology-driven open ecosystem and working with other financial institutions to support the future financial needs of society. Businesses operated by Ant Financial Services Group include Alipay, Ant Fortune, Zhima Credit and MYbank.

For more information on Ant Financial, please visit our website at www.antfin.com; or follow us on Twitter @AntFinancial.

Ant Financial Media Contact

Chenni Xu / Anna Wang
+19176642125 / +16464201479
chenni.xu@antfin.com / anna.wan@antfin.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a2ac282e-4aac-4dca-86b5-0b18dbb4e367