Alibaba's Hong Kong Shares Soar 18% as AI Computing Boom Fuels Cloud Revenue

TradingKey - Following Alibaba Group's nearly 13% surge in U.S. trading last Friday after exceeding earnings expectations, its Hong Kong-listed shares soared another 18% on Monday, refocusing global attention on the latest developments in Alibaba's AI business and its profound impact on the group's overall development.

Source: Yahoo Finance

Financial report data showed that while the core e-commerce business faces industry competition pressure, Alibaba Cloud business, driven by the strong momentum of the artificial intelligence boom, significantly exceeded market expectations for sales, becoming a key engine for the group's performance growth.

Specifically, Alibaba Cloud's revenue grew 26% year-over-year to RMB 33.4 billion (approximately $4.67 billion), marking a three-year high and surpassing the market's consensus expectation of 18.4%.

The core driving force behind this growth stems from Alibaba Cloud's continuous deep investment and massive commitment to its "AI + Cloud" strategy. Over the past four quarters, the company has cumulatively invested more than RMB 100 billion in AI infrastructure and AI product development.

Group CEO Eddie Wu stated, "Our investments in artificial intelligence have begun to yield tangible results. We see an increasingly clear path where artificial intelligence drives robust growth for Alibaba."

He also emphasized that the company will continue to fully advance its three-year plan, with future capital expenditures totaling up to RMB 380 billion in cloud computing and AI fields. Regarding potential fluctuations in global AI chip policies and supply chains, Wu revealed that the company has developed comprehensive contingency plans, collaborating closely with diversified partners to respond to various unexpected situations flexibly. Regardless of industry changes, Alibaba will proceed with the RMB 380 billion investment according to the established plan.

As one of the most active participants in China's artificial intelligence field, Alibaba has been frequently active and achieved significant results in AI model development. The Qwen 3 reasoning model launched on July 25 topped the global leaderboard of strongest open-source reasoning models.

In terms of infrastructure deployment, Alibaba Cloud has also made rapid progress. This year alone, it has activated eight new data centers across key domestic cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, as well as overseas strategic locations such as Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Dubai, and Mexico, expanding Alibaba Cloud's global infrastructure footprint to 29 regions and 89 availability zones.

Charu Chanana, Chief Investment Strategist at Saxo Markets, noted that Alibaba’s earnings underscore a bifurcation within China tech: AI is delivering scalable growth, while traditional consumer-facing segments remain mired in destructive price competition.