Ali Build · Yanzi

Hyperforce on Alibaba Cloud

Bringing Hyperforce to Alibaba Cloud for the China market. The first multisubstrate expansion applying the GCP paved path to a new substrate.

StatusIn Flight
Live PreviewAug 1, 2026
ArchitectureYanzi
AOV$60M imm. / $700M+

Executive Summary

The first multisubstrate expansion after EGL: bringing Hyperforce to Alibaba Cloud (architecture codename Yanzi) to unlock the China market. Live Preview targeted for Aug 1, 2026.

Why it matters commercially: $60M immediate revenue on close and over $700M total annual order value long-term. This is one of the highest-priority commercial programs at Salesforce and a direct proof point that the paved path scales beyond GCP.

Why it matters to APS/Missionforce: GCP paved path is a hard prerequisite. Services onboarded to Ali also validate Chameleon SDK adoption and unlock M7 (multisubstrate service parity) V2MOM credit. Unique constraints: Great Firewall for CI/CD, China data residency laws, Alibaba-specific managed services.

Status◐ In Flight (Yanzi arch)
Program LeadClaudia Santoro
Eng LeadZubin Sanjana / Jeff Lin
Next MilestoneLive Preview — Aug 1, 2026

What is the Ali Build?

The Ali Build is the program to run Hyperforce on Alibaba Cloud, targeting Chinese-market customers. "Ali" is short for Alibaba — not a person's name. The architecture codename is Yanzi. The build follows the exact paved path GCP EGL established, applied to a new substrate with unique China-specific constraints: network topology, data residency laws, and Alibaba-specific managed services.

Commercial priority: $60M immediate revenue on close, $700M+ total annual order value.

Scope & Deliverables

Managed Pipelines

Managed Pipelines adapted for Alibaba Cloud. Build & deploy across the Great Firewall.

In Flight

Artifact Transfer

Secure binary and image transfer from Salesforce internal registries into Alibaba Cloud (Stargate).

In Flight

IAC

Terraform/Pulumi modules adapted for Alibaba Cloud resource providers.

In Flight

BOM

Dependency and software bill of materials tracking for Ali substrate compliance.

In Flight

Vault / PKI / KMS

HashiCorp Vault and PKI ported to Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba KMS integration.

In Flight

FKP on ACK

FKP V2 adapted to Alibaba Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK).

In Flight

Service Mesh

Istio adapted for Alibaba Cloud networking topology.

In Flight

FedX Add-ons

Alibaba-backed implementations of kv, queue, message, object-storage, postgres.

In Flight

FIT

Failure Injection Testing / chaos engineering adapted for Alibaba Cloud failure modes.

In Flight

Teams Involved

LeadRole
Claudia SantoroProgram lead — Ali Build overall delivery
Zubin SanjanaEngineering lead — Ali substrate build
Jeff LinPlatform engineering (FKP, substrate infra) — continuity from GCP EGL
Josh GironManaged Pipelines + Chameleon SDK co-founder — multisubstrate CI/CD
Bo YangFedX add-on convergence — Alibaba-backed implementations
Amit KumarFedX add-ons platform (continuity from GCP)

Chameleon Multi-Substrate SDK

The Chameleon SDK is the cross-substrate developer SDK that makes writing Hyperforce services substrate-agnostic. It abstracts away AWS, GCP, and Alibaba-specific APIs behind a unified interface. Co-founded by Josh Giron.

Go

Primary implementation. Used across platform services.

GA

Java (MultiCloudJ)

Open-source Java SDK for JVM-based Salesforce core services.

GA
App dev guidance: Use Chameleon SDK interfaces rather than substrate-specific SDKs. This is the key enabler for write-once, run-on-any-substrate services.

Timeline

Nov 2025
Managed Releases functional on Alibaba Cloud
Release pipeline operational end-to-end on Ali substrate.
Aug 1, 2026
Live Preview
First customer-facing workloads on Alibaba Cloud. Target milestone.
Late 2026
General Availability
Full GA with all paved path requirements met.

App Dev Requirements

To onboard a service to the Ali Build, GCP paved path compliance is a prerequisite. Ali-specific additions:

GCP paved path is a prerequisite. Services not on the GCP paved path cannot be onboarded to Ali. Completing EGL compliance is the critical path for most teams.
RequirementNotes
GCP paved path completeAll five GCP requirements must be met first
Chameleon SDK adoptionNo direct Alibaba Cloud SDK calls; use Chameleon abstractions
Ali FedX add-on mappingVerify each FedX add-on used has an Alibaba-backed implementation
Artifact transfer complianceImages and binaries must flow through approved transfer pipeline (Stargate)
Data residency reviewAny customer-data-handling service must pass China data residency review

Sources & Curated Docs

Yanzi Architecture

Chameleon Multi-Substrate SDK

Slack Channels

Not Indexed — Ask Team

  • Ali Build "Live Preview" launch plan (Aug 1, 2026)
    Not surfaced in doc search. Ask Claudia Santoro or Zubin Sanjana.
  • Managed Releases on Alibaba Cloud — GA announcement
    Only maintenance-window references found. Ask #alibaba-dev-announcements.
  • Chameleon Python SDK
    Canonical SDK docs only reference Java (MultiCloudJ) and Go. Python bindings may not exist as a first-class SDK. Ask Josh Giron.
  • Dedicated Chameleon SDK / MultiCloudJ Slack channel
    No dedicated channel found. Discussions live in #managed-pipelines-community and #fedx-platform.