Alibaba
Alibaba Group is one of the largest internet companies in the world. Headquartered in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba is best known for its Chinese marketplaces, Taobao and Tmall. Alibaba also has a stake in its spin-off payments app, Alipay, which is run by Ant Financial.
Alibaba was founded by Jack Ma, then an English teacher, in 1999.
Green shoots in greentech logistics
In The Checkout this week, we look at Southeast Asia’s key logistics players and Cainiao’s moves in Vietnam.

Chinese tech giants bought $16b in Nvidia H20 chips in Q1 2025
The H20 is Nvidia’s most advanced AI chip available in China under US export restrictions.

DingTalk founder returns as CEO, marking Alibaba’s new AI push
DingTalk, launched by Chen Hang in 2015, now boasts over 700 million users in China.

Taobao invests $1.5b in livestreaming to double users by 2027
Taobao Live aims to double its gross merchandise volume and user base by 2027, focusing on user acquisition.

Tencent, Alibaba introduce AI tools for farming in rural China
Tencent’s chatbot Yuanbao and Alibaba’s Tongyi offer image recognition and voice interaction to help with farming.

Alibaba open-sources multimodal AI Qwen2.5-Omni-7B
Qwen2.5-Omni-7B is Alibaba’s first model to process text, images, audio, and video simultaneously.

Chinese tech rally falters as Xiaomi, Alibaba stocks drop
Chinese technology stocks experienced a significant decline on Mar. 25, 2025. The Hang Seng Tech Index fell by 3.8%.

Alibaba’s chairman sees rising confidence in China’s business
Tsai expressed optimism about China’s economy, suggesting the business environment has stabilized and is set for recovery.

Alibaba’s AI assistant Quark gains praise in AI race
Quark positions Alibaba against major rivals like Butterfly Effect’s Manus and OpenAI’s Deep Research.

Alibaba launches new AI assistant app Quark
The new version of Quark includes features such as an AI chatbot, advanced research capabilities, and task execution tools.
