Aliyun, the cloud computing subsidiary of Alibaba Group, turned a profit for the first time last year.

In its 2022 fiscal year (April 2021 to March 2022), Aliyun’s profit from earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA) reached 1.15 billion yuan (US$170 million), up from a 2.2-billion-yuan loss a year ago. 

While finally making money, growth slowed from 50 percent last year, to 23 percent this year. Aliyun cited loss of major customers and reduced demand. CFO of Alibaba XU Hong said the company invested more than 120 billion yuan in technology last year.

Aliyun has more than 4 million paying users. It built data centers in Germany, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand last year.