OceanBase（海扬数据库）, the database company developed within Ant Group and now operated independently, is in talks to raise between CNY 2 billion and CNY 3 billion in a proposed Series A round, according to people familiar with the matter.
The financing has not been announced or completed, and its size and terms could still change. The proceeds would be used to expand OceanBase’s AI-focused data platform and accelerate its international business, the people said.
OceanBase’s annualized revenue run rate has reportedly exceeded CNY 1.4 billion in 2026, representing growth of about 70% from a year earlier. Because OceanBase is privately held and has not publicly disclosed the figures, the numbers should be treated as reported operating estimates rather than audited full-year revenue.
The database traces its origins to Alibaba’s e-commerce operations. It was first deployed in Taobao before expanding into Ant Group’s payments infrastructure. By the 2016 Singles’ Day shopping festival, OceanBase was handling all the core database traffic for Alipay, including transactions, payments, membership and accounting. It began serving external customers in 2017 and started operating as an independent commercial company in 2020.
Ant Group announced a further restructuring in 2024 under which OceanBase established its own board and began operating independently in the market. A subsequent shareholding adjustment brought in employee investment vehicles, affiliates of Alibaba Group and other investors. OceanBase nevertheless retains close historical and commercial links with Ant, which continues to describe it as a distributed relational database developed by the group.
The proposed fundraising comes as OceanBase broadens its product portfolio beyond conventional transaction processing. In June, the company introduced OceanBase AI Database, a platform designed to handle operational data, real-time analytics, multimodal information and workloads associated with enterprise AI agents in one architecture.
Its overseas expansion is also already under way. OceanBase products are used by financial and technology companies including Indonesia’s DANA, the Philippines’ GCash and Pakistan’s easypaisa. New funding would therefore support the expansion of an existing international business rather than mark the company’s first entry into overseas markets.
The competitive challenge remains substantial. Global enterprise database markets are crowded with established vendors and cloud platforms including Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and IBM. Winning foreign customers will require more than technical performance: OceanBase must also build local sales and support teams, meet country-specific data and security requirements, and persuade large organizations to entrust mission-critical systems to a relatively unfamiliar Chinese supplier.
Even so, the prospective round is notable for China’s broader globalization drive. Chinese companies have built stronger international positions in hardware, manufacturing and consumer products than in foundational enterprise software. If OceanBase can convert its experience in large-scale financial systems into sustained overseas revenue, it would offer a test of whether Chinese infrastructure software can compete internationally on product capability and cost—not merely on demand created by domestic technology-substitution policies.