Alibaba News

Alibaba Group shares surged over 8% this week as investors cheered the Chinese tech giant’s aggressive push to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities and reduce reliance on U.S. chipmakers. The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose 5.9% to HK$151.80 (about US$19.49), marking their highest level since November 2021, while U.S.-listed BABA stock climbed past $155 on the chart. Around 80% of the funds will go into boosting Alibaba’s cloud backbone, expanding data centers, upgrading infrastructure, and strengthening services to handle the rising wave of AI demand. The rest will support its push into international e-commerce, reinforcing the company’s twin growth engines of cloud and global retail. AI Boom Powers Alibaba’s Cloud Growth Alibaba Group is seeing the payoff from its AI push show up clearly in its cloud numbers. In its latest earnings, the company posted a 26% year-on-year jump in cloud revenue for the April–June quarter, fueled by soaring demand for AI model training and inference workloads. Chief Executive Eddie Wu said “AI plus cloud” will remain one of Alibaba’s two core growth engines alongside e-commerce, adding that the company plans to invest at least $53 billion over the next three years to build out its AI and cloud infrastructure. At the same time, Alibaba introduced its newest large language model, Qwen3-Next, built for deeper long-text understanding and designed to cut training costs dramatically. The move highlights Alibaba’s focus on making its AI stack faster, more cost-efficient, and less dependent on expensive third-party hardware. Shifting Away from Nvidia: China’s Chip Push In a major strategic move, Alibaba and fellow Chinese tech leader Baidu have begun training AI models on their own homegrown chips, signaling a pivot away from U.S. semiconductor suppliers amid export restrictions. Alibaba’s semiconductor division has developed the Zhenwu processor to power cloud-based AI workloads, while Baidu is using its Kunlun P800 chips to train new versions of its Ernie large language model. These steps reflect Beijing’s drive for technological self-reliance after U.S. restrictions blocked access to Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs, including the H100 and upcoming Blackwell series. For now, Alibaba and Baidu still rely on Nvidia chips for their largest training tasks, but the growing use of domestic chips marks a significant milestone. It reduces long-term cost pressures and positions these companies to align with China’s industrial policies aimed at cutting dependence on U.S. technology. Alibaba Chart Analysis Today Current price: $155.44 Support: Strong support sits near $148, with additional layers around $136 and $126. Resistance: The next key resistance zone is at $165, followed by $180 if momentum accelerates. Trade entry: Short-term traders may eye pullbacks into the $148–$150 range as a potential entry if support holds. A break below $148 could tilt risk toward $136. Alibaba Stock Outlook Alibaba’s surge past the $155 level marks a clear breakout from its multi-month consolidation, fueled by renewed confidence in its AI roadmap and cloud growth. The company’s aggressive funding plan, rapid cloud revenue acceleration, and gradual shift to in-house chips give it strong long-term positioning in the global AI race. If AI demand sustains and U.S. export restrictions keep pushing Chinese firms to innovate, Alibaba could gradually reclaim the $180–$200 zone in the coming quarters. While near-term volatility is likely, the market is beginning to re-rate Alibaba as a critical AI infrastructure player rather than just an e-commerce giant. Alibaba FAQs: Why is Alibaba issuing $3.2 billion in convertible bonds? Alibaba Group is raising $3.2 billion through zero-coupon convertible bonds to strengthen its AI push. About 80% of the funds will go toward expanding cloud infrastructure and data centers, while the rest will support its international e-commerce business. Is Alibaba really moving away from Nvidia chips? Yes, partially. Alibaba and Baidu have started training AI models on their own chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia’s hardware after U.S. export restrictions. Alibaba’s Zhenwu chips are being used for cloud-based AI tasks, marking a major step toward self-sufficiency. Why did Alibaba stock surge nearly 8% today? BABA shares jumped about 8% as investors cheered its aggressive AI investments, strong cloud revenue growth, and the move toward in-house chips. The rally pushed the stock to new 52-week highs, drawing renewed interest from growth-focused traders.