Alibaba Group Holding Ltd

Hong Kong share sales raised a record $47.5 billion in the third quarter as Chinese technology companies tapped investors for capital to fund artificial intelligence expansion, Bloomberg reported. Initial public offerings, placements and block trades during the July-to-September period produced the largest fundraising haul ever for those months, pushing the city's total for 2026 above $92 billion and putting Hong Kong within reach of the $112.5 billion annual record set in 2021. Alibaba Group's $10.2 billion follow-on offering was the quarter's largest transaction, while Zhongji Innolight raised almost $8 billion in Hong Kong's biggest listing in nearly seven years. AI model developer Z.AI has raised $9.6 billion this year through its IPO, placements and convertible bonds, and MiniMax, Shanghai Iluvatar CoreX Semiconductor and Shanghai Biren Technology also returned to investors shortly after their IPO lockups expired. The boom spread across Asia-Pacific, where third-quarter share sales exceeded $120 billion, the highest for the period in six years, with India raising a record $26 billion since July on domestic liquidity. Investor appetite is becoming more selective as markets weaken: the MSCI Asia-Pacific Index fell as much as 7% in July amid questions about returns from heavy AI spending, and only two of Hong Kong's 10 largest deals since July are currently trading above their offer prices.

Alibaba has unveiled Qwen Intelligence, a full-stack agentic solution for smartphone makers, with HONOR as the first partner to adopt it on October 1, 2026, and the two are jointly developing specialized models as well as solutions for next-generation AI smartphones. HONOR's first devices to integrate Qwen Intelligence with the phone's own intelligent system are the Magic9 Series smartphones launched on September 28 and the HONOR Robot Phone. The platform was launched at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, spanning from mobile-optimized foundation models to ready-to-use agents, with three agents in the first phase: the Mobile Planner Agent, the Mobile-Use Agent, and the Mobile Creative Agent. Steven Hoi, head of Qwen Mobile AI at Token Foundry and vice president of Alibaba Token Hub, said the agentic smartphone is the primary gateway connecting personal AI to the physical world. The collaboration between Alibaba and HONOR, built on Qwen Intelligence and the MagicOS operating system, enables HONOR's AI smartphones to achieve task accuracy of up to 91.8% and to coordinate complex workflows of more than 100 steps.

InnovestX Securities has unveiled its investment strategy for the fourth quarter of 2026, saying investors need to exercise greater caution amid rising interest rates and high oil prices, which are pressuring inflation, bond yields, and foreign fund flows. The firm set a target for Thailand's benchmark stock index in 2027 at 1,715 points and said the 1,550 level is starting to look attractive for accumulation. It named five top picks: AMATA, CENTEL, CRC, KTB, and PR9. Suthichai Kumworachai, Head of Investment Strategy & Research, said the prolonged conflict between the United States and Iran creates a chain of risk running from oil prices to inflation, the direction of interest rates, financing costs, and the baht. Dr. Piyasak Manasant, Head of Economic Research, kept his forecast for Thai economic growth in 2026 and 2027 at 2.0% while raising his average oil price assumptions for 2026 and 2027 to 90 and 80 US dollars per barrel, respectively. Sitthichai Duangrattanachaya, Head of Investment Strategy, said earnings per share for the Thai stock market have been continuously revised upward, particularly from the energy sector. For overseas investment, he recommended stocks that benefit from AI, namely Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Tencent, and Alibaba, while in the semiconductor group he highlighted Lumentum, Naura, SMIC, and Biren. He also advised diversifying into defensive and dividend stocks. Joranapong Rattanasopha, Head of Investment Product Specialist, recommended the M-SCHD fund, which invests through the Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF. SCHD currently has less than 10% exposure to technology stocks, compared with nearly 40% for the S&P 500 index, and the correlation between SCHD and the S&P 500 has fallen to about 0.3, the lowest level since the fund was established in 2011.

Alibaba ramped up its artificial intelligence spending sharply in the June 2026 quarter, reporting RMB67.7 billion in capital expenditures, up 75% year over year, driven by AI infrastructure, higher CPU-compute capacity and rising chip-component prices. The outlay is part of a RMB380 billion three-year capital investment plan, of which RMB190 billion had already been spent by the end of the June quarter. The spending weighed on cash generation, with free cash flow deepening to an outflow of RMB44.7 billion from an RMB18.8 billion outflow a year earlier, while adjusted EBITA fell 30% and net income declined 75%. Early monetization offered an offset, as AI Cloud and Compute Services revenues rose 45% to RMB48.4 billion and adjusted EBITA for that business jumped 133% to RMB5.6 billion, and Alibaba expects AI-related capital expenditure to break even in roughly three years. The company carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its fiscal 2027 EPS stands at $6.41, down from estimates issued 30 and 60 days ago but still implying 64.78% growth from the prior year.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has asked some technology companies, including Alibaba Group and ByteDance, to report their plans to purchase Nvidia's new RTX Pro 5500 graphics processing chip, which was launched this month, according to a Bloomberg report citing The Information. The companies must specify the number of chips they intend to buy and the purpose of use. Sources said the ministry has notified some companies of plans to approve such purchases. The move signals that China's government may allow these companies to buy Nvidia chips. Previously, the U.S. government banned exports to China of Nvidia's most powerful AI processing chips over concerns they would boost China's AI capabilities and military potential. However, the RTX Pro 5500 is a chip designed primarily for graphics and simulation work, even though it can support AI services. It differs from the top-tier GB300 because it uses older manufacturing technology and is designed for large-scale computing tasks. The U.S. government has just eased restrictions on exports of some Nvidia chips to China, although most of these chips are older models and are sold in fairly limited quantities.

Phichai Panjasang, Chief Executive Officer of AJ Advance Technology Public Company Limited, or AJA, disclosed that the company has benefited significantly from its Alibaba.com business, for which it serves as an Official Partner in Thailand. Customer response and interest have grown by roughly 20-30%, as many small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, and Thai businesses have turned to expanding into overseas markets to generate new revenue amid shrinking domestic purchasing power. As a result, sales in the company's electric motorcycle business declined, while its athletic footwear and sporting goods distribution business continues to operate as normal. On the clean energy side, the company has signed a cooperation agreement and begun a Proof of Concept, or POC, pilot project with J&T Express, installing solar power systems on the rooftops of transport stations, EV charging stations, and battery swap cabinets. The installation of solar cells at the first branch is expected to be completed by early October, with full end-to-end testing of the station, battery, and electric motorcycle systems set to begin within November. If the POC results meet their targets, AJA plans to expand this clean energy ecosystem to J&T Express branches nationwide. Meanwhile, the company will hold an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on October 2 to seek approval for a convertible bond issuance of up to 700 million baht. Management stated that this is not new debt but a renewal of an existing facility previously approved by a shareholders' meeting. The original facility expired because the company carried out a private placement, which changed the shareholding proportion of existing shareholders and the capital structure, requiring a new shareholder resolution in accordance with the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited is deepening its full-stack AI strategy with a planned next-generation model containing 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, as much as four times the size of its current flagship Qwen 3.8 Max, alongside the unveiling of the Zhenwu V900 AI chip, which delivers three times the performance of its predecessor and is designed to operate in large clusters. Mass production of the chip is expected to begin in early 2027, and Alibaba also aims to expand Alibaba Cloud's data-center capacity to more than 20 gigawatts by 2032. Its shares rose 5.1% following the announcements. In the June quarter, Alibaba's AI cloud and compute revenue rose 45% year over year to RMB48.44 billion, or $7.14 billion, while AI-related product revenue reached RMB12.38 billion and maintained triple-digit growth for the 12th consecutive quarter, and cloud adjusted EBITA increased 133% to RMB5.94 billion, lifting the margin to about 12%. Alibaba spent RMB67.68 billion, or $9.98 billion, on capital expenditures in the June quarter, up 75% year over year, largely because of AI infrastructure investment, and quarterly net profit fell 75% as AI-related spending increased. The company expects AI investment to break even within three years.

Alo is defying China's consumer slowdown, selling more than 10 million yuan, about $1.5 million, within one minute of its Tmall presale checkout opening at 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 12, according to Alibaba. The Los Angeles-based activewear and lifestyle brand went on to set a sales record for a newly launched brand in Tmall's sports and outdoor category, even as China's retail sales rose just 0.4% year over year in August and second-quarter GDP growth slowed to 4.3%. On Sept. 16, Alo announced plans to open eight more stores across seven Greater China cities through 2027: two in Shanghai and one each in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou, with a previously announced Hong Kong flagship at K11 Musea slated to open this fall. As of Aug. 14, Alo's bestselling product was its 1,150-yuan Suit Up straight-leg trousers, with more than 10,000 sold, followed by a 1,750-yuan sneaker that sold more than 3,000 pairs, both at full price. Alo is entering a market long dominated by Lululemon, which operated 174 stores in mainland China as of Aug. 2 but saw comparable sales there fall 8% on a constant-dollar basis in its fiscal second quarter.

Alibaba Group outlined plans for a much larger AI model, a new accelerator and a vast expansion of cloud capacity, sending its U.S. shares down about 0.6% to $109.97 at 11.08am ET on Friday. The company plans to train a model with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, versus 2.4 trillion for its current flagship, Qwen 3.8 Max. Alibaba says its Zhenwu V900 chip delivers three times the performance of its predecessor and can work in clusters of up to 500,000 chips. As Reuters reported, Alibaba is also targeting more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032. At $109.97, the stock trades 9.37% below the $121.34 GF Value cited by GuruFocus, leaving the payoff dependent on customers using the new capacity heavily enough to cover its cost.

Citi sharply raised its capital-spending forecasts for Alibaba, reiterating a Buy rating and $190 price target as the company targets 20 gigawatts of AI capacity by 2032. Citi analyst Alicia Yap wrote that assuming a 50/50 Capex/Opex partner split at US$30bn per 1GW, the firm lifted its FY27 through FY29 estimated capex to Rmb258bn, Rmb283bn and Rmb282bn. Under those assumptions, external AI cloud revenue could reach $168 billion by fiscal 2033, roughly 40% compound annual growth from fiscal 2026, with a sensitivity range of $126 billion to $210 billion. Alibaba is also broadening its technology push: T-Head unveiled its Zhenwu V900 accelerator and Lingjun Supernode infrastructure to power AliCloud's production-ready agentic cloud platform, and the company is expanding its Qwen model family, including the 2.4-trillion-parameter Qwen3.8-Max, while developing smaller models for cheaper deployment and moving into image, audio and world models. Alibaba shares nevertheless fell 3.7% in premarket trading amid concerns surrounding a reported Chinese government probe.

Alibaba's China Quick Commerce revenues rose 45% year over year to RMB53.3 billion in the June 2026 quarter, driven by Freshippo and Taobao Instant Commerce, which also improved unit economics while holding market share on higher average order values and better fulfillment efficiency. Management expects Quick Commerce to eventually contribute around 30% of platform GMV, positioning it as a second growth curve, though overall profitability is not expected until fiscal 2029. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2027 revenues is $166.75 billion, implying 14.66% year-over-year growth, while the fiscal 2027 EPS consensus of $6.51 reflects a 2% upward revision over the past 30 days and projected growth of 67.35% from the prior year. Competition is intensifying: Amazon added 80 U.S. cities and towns in the second quarter of 2026 through Amazon Now, reaching more than 250 locations globally with gross sales and units sold up over 80% quarter over quarter, and DoorDash is expanding into grocery and retail, its fastest-growing marketplace category. BABA stock has fallen 20.6% year to date, lagging the Zacks Internet - Commerce industry's 3.4% gain, and trades at a forward 12-month Price/Earnings ratio of 16.09X versus the industry's 20.92X, with a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a farewell speech at the United Nations General Assembly, or UNGA, on Tuesday, September 22, dismissing President Donald Trump's claims of achieving peace in Gaza and calling the situation shameful because the humanitarian corridor has not opened for even a single second. The White House pushed back, insisting that Trump is the one who truly ended the war. On the same day, the cyber-extortion group Scattered Hunter claimed it had breached the systems of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, and stolen data on both former and current personnel as well as a huge number of job applicants, while the FBI acknowledged it was urgently investigating the incident. OpenAI pressed ahead with its market push by expanding its GPT-6 family of artificial intelligence products, launching two new models, GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, touting prices 50% lower than the promotional price of the previous generation while still carrying over some capabilities from its flagship GPT-6 Astra, to serve users and organizations looking to cut computing costs. Meanwhile, Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence startup, launched its latest AI model Claude Opus 5.5 on Tuesday, September 22, saying it performs on par with top-tier models such as Fable 5.1 but cuts the total computing cost per task by as much as 40% compared with the previous Opus 5. And Alibaba Group Holding is accelerating the expansion of its data centers in Europe and the Middle East, part of a plan to build 20 gigawatts of cloud and AI infrastructure worldwide, at a time when China and the United States are competing ever more fiercely over chips and artificial intelligence models.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is accelerating its data center expansion in Europe and the Middle East as part of a 20-gigawatt global infrastructure buildout. Alibaba executive Li Feifei said at the company's Apsara conference in Hangzhou on Wednesday that the Chinese e-commerce leader will set up its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months. The company will also expand its data center footprint in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong, boosting its ability to provide localized cloud and AI services. The push puts Alibaba increasingly head-to-head with Western competitors such as Amazon.com Group Inc. and Alphabet Inc. beyond Asia. Alibaba has outlined a $53 billion, three-year AI investment plan and aims to build a 20-gigawatt global data center network by 2032, which Citigroup estimates could drive more than $160 billion in external cloud revenue.

The National Development and Reform Commission said at a press conference on September 22 that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period it will push the BeiDou industry to exceed 1 trillion yuan in scale within five years, achieving new breakthroughs in market-oriented, industrialized, and internationalized large-scale applications of BeiDou. On the same day, the annual development report released by the China Electricity Council showed that China's electrification rate has surpassed 29 percent, reaching about 29.5 percent in 2025, up 1.4 percentage points from the previous year, and will leap to first place among major global economies by 2030. Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming said at the Apsara Conference that current customer demand for AI is very strong, and the company will fully invest in AI infrastructure construction, with a goal of operating more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity under Alibaba Cloud by 2032. Meituan Vice President and head of its flash purchase business unit Xiao Kun said that over the next three years, Meituan Flash Purchase will invest 30 billion yuan in support resources for industry partners in infrastructure construction, product research and development, and merchandise marketing. At the company level, CICC's share swap merger received valid declarations of dissent for 7.3219 million shares, and its A shares resumed trading; Shanshan Corporation plans to invest 5.106 billion yuan to build an integrated base project with an annual output of 150,000 tons of lithium-ion battery anode materials; and Wisesoft was placed on file for investigation by the China Securities Regulatory Commission for suspected illegal information disclosure.

Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900 AI accelerator at its September 22 developer conference, saying it delivers roughly three times the performance of its predecessor and is scheduled for mass production in early 2027. The company also discussed future Qwen models scaling to 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters and plans to expand global data-center capacity above 20 gigawatts by 2032. Alibaba can run the homegrown chip across its own cloud, models and internal applications, giving it captive demand before broad sales, though the performance claims come from Alibaba itself and mass production is still expected in 2027. For Nvidia, the concern is structural rather than immediate: export restrictions already limit its ability to serve China's highest-end demand, and each generation of domestic hardware that narrows the gap makes it harder for Nvidia to reclaim its old China position if policy changes. Insider Monkey's database showed 97 hedge funds with reportable Alibaba longs in Q2 2026, down from 102 in Q1, while Nvidia had 285 hedge-fund holders, up from 275; Alibaba short interest was about 41.98 million shares as of August 14, roughly 2.0% of public float with around 4.6 days to cover.

Alibaba Group's external cloud revenue growth reached a multi-year high in the June quarter, with AI-related product revenues sustaining triple-digit year-over-year growth for 12 consecutive quarters and now representing more than a third of external cloud revenues. At its September 2026 Apsara Conference, Alibaba outlined its next-generation Qwen roadmap, confirming that its upcoming Qwen 4 model is already in training, with future Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 versions projected to scale toward 5-10 trillion parameters, and introduced a new proprietary AI chip alongside an agentic cloud architecture and a mobile AI agent platform. For its first-quarter fiscal 2027, Alibaba reported sharply higher capital expenditure year over year as it continues drawing down a previously announced three-year AI infrastructure investment plan, with a meaningful portion of that multi-year budget already deployed. Management guided that cloud revenue growth is expected to keep accelerating in coming quarters, with EBITDA margins expanding sequentially, and reiterated a longer-term ambition of a much larger external cloud revenue base with materially higher margins by decade's end, while its Model-as-a-Service annualized revenue run rate is targeted to roughly double by fiscal year-end. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2027 earnings is pegged at $6.87 per share, implying 76.61% year-over-year growth, even as BABA shares have plunged 18.6% year to date, underperforming the Zacks Internet – Commerce industry's 3.4% growth and the Retail-Wholesale sector's 1.4% decline.

Alibaba shares rose more than 3% after the company unveiled what it called China's most powerful AI chip, claiming three times the performance of its previous generation, and announced plans to expand data center capacity and train a new AI model at the scale of 5 to 10 trillion parameters. On Holding shares climbed 11% as the Swiss sneaker maker said it expects sales growth in the high teens over the next few years while moving into sports including golf and football, though the stock remains down 41% year to date. Viking Therapeutics shares surged about 30% in pre-market trading, having earlier been up more than 50%, after the biotech reported positive top-line results from its VK2735-102 maintenance study showing its experimental obesity drug VK2735 maintained up to 97% of weight loss versus 61% for placebo when subjects switched to every-other-week dosing, with Leerink analysts calling the data stellar and saying it strengthens the drug's competitive profile. The study showed the drug led to 22% weight loss over 33 weeks, positioning it as a potential contender to Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Roche also released positive trial data on its obesity treatment, adding to intensifying competition that left Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk shares slightly lower.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said at the company's Apsara Conference that Alibaba Cloud plans to operate more than 20 gigawatts of data centers globally by 2032, according to FactSet, and he also launched the Zhenwu V900 chip. Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp Holdings each dropped more than 5% after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a report showing Medicare has been paying 16% more for laboratory services than private payors, with the federal entity saying it will align most Medicare payments with private sector rates. Vicor rallied 9% after the power electronics company issued third quarter guidance forecasting sequential revenue growth of more than 20% quarter over quarter, versus prior guidance of nearly 10%. On Holding jumped more than 6% after the Swiss sportswear company set new midterm financial targets at its Investor Day, including absolute net sales reaching at least CHF5.6 billion by 2029 and gross profit margin of 65% throughout the period, and said it will repurchase up to an aggregate of $1 billion in Class A ordinary shares by December 2029 while reiterating its full year 2026 outlook. GameStop gained 3.5% after CEO Ryan Cohen disclosed a purchase of 1.2 million shares.

A senior Iranian official told Kyodo News that Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States begins preliminary steps to reduce military pressure, part of the Iranian government's stepped-up efforts to revive negotiations with Washington. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has increased crude oil exports through its Gulf coast ports after last week's attacks forced a halt to oil shipments through the East-West Pipeline, which links the eastern oil-producing region to the Yanbu port on the Red Sea. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the UK will send one Voyager aerial refueling aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the coming days to support national defense missions, after Saudi Arabia faced an increase in attacks from the Houthi group. On the technology front, Alibaba Group announced a major strategic plan to train a new generation of artificial intelligence models with parameter sizes of up to 5 to 10 trillion, along with the launch of the latest-generation Zhenwu V900 AI chip and plans to expand data centers, to drive a comprehensive AI infrastructure strategy spanning models, processing chips, and cloud data centers. Meanwhile, a South Korean appellate court ruled to reduce the prison sentence of Kim Keon-hee, wife of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, to five years from the seven years handed down by the lower court, in a corruption case that included the selling of posts in state agencies. And Converse, a Nike-owned shoe brand, announced it is removing its controversial advertisement from all channels and issued a formal apology after facing intense criticism that elements of the image evoked the Ku Klux Klan.

At the 2026 Hangzhou Apsara Conference held on September 22, Alibaba's T-Head unveiled the self-developed AI chip Zhenwu V900, boosting computing power to three times that of the Zhenwu M890. A single cluster can scale to 500,000 cards. The chip is scheduled for volume production and market launch in the first quarter of 2027, and will be deployed at scale first in Alibaba Cloud data centers. Alibaba also announced that the Qwen4 large model, based on a new-generation architecture, is already in training, and future versions such as Qwen4.5 and Qwen5 will expand to 5 to 10 trillion parameters. Alibaba Cloud aims to operate more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032. T-Head also publicly revealed for the first time the update roadmap for its Yitian series server CPUs, completing a full-stack self-developed product portfolio spanning computing, storage, and networking. On the same day, the State Administration for Market Regulation pushed forward the formulation of a batch of national standards for core quantum devices, releasing two new national standards, the Technical Specification for Quantum Squeezed Light Sources and the Test Method for Performance of Periodically Poled Lithium Niobate Quantum Frequency Conversion Devices, and newly approving four national standard projects. Li Chao, deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the commission's September press conference that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will push the BeiDou industry to exceed 1 trillion yuan in scale within five years, achieve new breakthroughs in marketization, industrialization, and internationalization, and accelerate the introduction and implementation of the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Satellite Navigation. A report released by the China Electricity Council on September 22 shows that China's electrification rate has surpassed 29 percent and will rank first among major global economies by 2030. An Omdia report shows that global semiconductor revenue exceeded 425 billion US dollars in the second quarter of 2026, up 31.4 percent quarter on quarter. An IDC report shows that in the first half of 2026, the global market size for industrial-grade quadruped robot applications grew 125.1 percent year on year.

Alibaba Group's U.S. shares jumped approximately 4.3% to $113.25 Friday morning after its Qwen AI model briefly powered a Federal Register search tool. The Qwen-powered search option was available Wednesday before disappearing around the time social-media posts drew attention to it. Reuters reported that the FBI recently accused Alibaba of copying technology from Anthropic, an allegation the Chinese embassy in Washington called unfounded. The immediate cybersecurity concern appeared limited because the Federal Register deals with public information, but experts said the bigger question is whether any U.S. government data traveled outside federal systems. At $113.25, Alibaba trades 5.76% below its GF Value estimate of $120.17.

Alibaba.com, the business-to-business e-commerce platform, or B2B, has officially launched Accio, an agentic AI-powered business assistant for small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, in Thailand. The launch took place at the Thailand B2B AI Seller Summit 2026 under the theme Beyond Export, unlocking the potential of Thai SMEs for the global stage with Accio. Accio functions as a team of AI specialists made up of AI agents with specific areas of expertise that can coordinate with one another, handling the entire process from market research, product planning, sourcing of goods and suppliers, price negotiation, and creating multilingual product listings, through to global marketing and managing online storefronts. Entrepreneurs do not need any programming skills. At the same time, the company also launched the Smart Assistant Agent, which is powered by Accio and connects directly to the Alibaba.com Seller Workbench store management system. Alibaba.com said Thailand has more than 3.1 million SMEs, accounting for 99.5% of all businesses, generating more than 70% of the country's employment and contributing about 35% of gross domestic product, or GDP, yet accounting for less than 15% of Thailand's total export value. Meanwhile, in August 2026, the number of product listings from Thai sellers on the platform rose by more than 150% compared with the same period a year earlier, while the number of inquiries from buyers increased by more than 90%. Roger Luo, head of business for South Asia and Southeast Asia at Alibaba.com, said the company wants to boost the capabilities of Thai entrepreneurs so they can operate in a way that is close to that of large corporations. Wuttisak Kanjanaporn, director of the Digital Commerce Market Office at the Department of International Trade Promotion, or DITP, said digital technology is playing a growing role in the competitiveness of Thai entrepreneurs, especially SMEs. Ethan Wang, head of global seller products and services at Alibaba.com, said Accio was developed to give SMEs an AI team that can start working immediately. Alibaba.com also launched a new membership package for sellers to support Thai exporters.

Chinese model developer Z.AI launched roughly $5 billion of share and convertible-bond sales on September 11 to fund models and computing infrastructure, days after a September 14 opinion piece in China's state-backed Global Times called Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's proposal to pace frontier AI a "Cold War playbook" aimed at China. The financing signals Chinese developers have strong incentives to accelerate while U.S. labs debate restraint, and it lands as Alibaba Group Holding Limited funds China's AI stack while Nvidia Corporation says export controls have largely shut it out of China's data-center compute market. Alibaba completed an HK$80 billion, roughly $10.2 billion, Hong Kong share placement on August 26 to finance chips, infrastructure and model development, after its August 20 results showed AI Cloud and Compute Services revenue rose 45% to $7.1 billion and cloud adjusted EBITA increased 133%. Nvidia's latest 10-Q said it was effectively foreclosed from China's data-center compute market at the end of its fiscal second quarter, with limited H200 shipments less than 1% of quarterly Data Center revenue. U.S. officials accused Alibaba and other Chinese labs on September 8 of illicit model distillation, allegations China rejected, and Insider Monkey's database showed 97 hedge funds with reportable BABA long positions in Q2 2026, down from 102 in Q1, while 285 hedge funds were long Nvidia in Q2, up from 275 in Q1.

Alibaba is expected to post earnings of $1.57 per share for the current quarter, a change of +157.4% from the year-ago quarter, with the Zacks Consensus Estimate rising +12.7% over the last 30 days. For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $6.51 indicates a year-over-year change of +67.4%, though that estimate has slipped -5.8% over the last 30 days, while the next fiscal year's consensus of $9.1 points to a +39.8% change and has moved -4.7% over the past month. On the revenue side, the consensus sales estimate of $40.49 billion for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +16.3%, with $166.74 billion and $184.2 billion expected for the current and next fiscal years, changes of +14.7% and +10.5% respectively. In the last reported quarter, Alibaba posted revenues of $39.64 billion, up +14.7% year over year, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $38.63 billion by +2.61%, while EPS of $1.26 compared with $2.06 a year ago for an EPS surprise of -35.05%. Alibaba is rated Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and carries a Zacks Value Style Score of C, indicating it is trading at par with its peers.

Google Cloud officially opened its Singapore engineering centre on 15 September, the company's first engineering centre in Southeast Asia, serving as a hub for product development in the region. The company said in a statement that the centre will bring together software engineers specialising in artificial intelligence, AI infrastructure, data, computing, machine learning, networking and storage, as well as a frontline support team. It will work with businesses to develop cloud systems and solutions for use in Singapore and other markets. Salaries for AI personnel in Singapore are growing five times faster than the country's average wage, and new graduates in this field start their careers earning as much as 90,000 Singapore dollars a year. Meanwhile, technology companies from China and the United States are racing to expand hiring in Singapore. On 20 May, OpenAI announced an investment of more than 300 million Singapore dollars, along with plans to set up an Applied AI Lab and create more than 200 technical jobs in the country over the coming years. Anthropic, for its part, opened recruitment for product support specialists based in Singapore for the first time, and Alibaba's cloud computing business unit established a global artificial intelligence innovation centre in Singapore in 2025.

Orange Lion Sports, founded by Alibaba Group, unveiled Smartshot 2.0, an upgraded AI sports solution, at the Sports Services exhibition during the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services, held September 9-13 in Beijing. The upgraded system features six-camera Hawk-Eye electronic line calling that delivers instant in/out calls on a large screen and can announce IN or OUT at adjustable volumes, plus AI commentary and auto-directing that cut broadcasting costs of up to hundreds of thousands of yuan. Smartshot has integrated Alibaba's Tongyi Qwen large language model to launch what the company describes as the industry's first AI Tournament Assistant in the first half of 2026, enabling scheduling and registration to be completed in minutes, and now offers pricing at one-tenth that of comparable offerings. Peng Wei, CTO of Orange Lion Sports, said the goal is to find the optimal balance between precision and cost control, rejecting expensive professional premiums in favor of cost-effective, inclusive technology. Since its launch, Smartshot has been deployed across more than 500 courts and expanded into overseas markets, with installations in Europe, Australia, Hong Kong SAR, and Taiwan region.