Cathie Wood's Ark Invest Rebuilds Alibaba Position Amid Renewed AI Momentum

TradingKey - Cathie Wood, the renowned tech-focused investor and founder of Ark Invest, has made a bold return to Chinese internet stocks after four years — significantly increasing her stake in Alibaba. Shortly after her firm re-established its position, Alibaba’s stock surged 9%, fueled by major advancements in its AI strategy, including a full-stack AI upgrade and a new partnership with Nvidia.

On Wednesday, September 24, Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares (9988.HK) rose steadily throughout the day, closing up 9.16% at HK$174. In pre-market trading in the U.S., Alibaba ADRs (BABA.US) also jumped nearly 10%.

According to Ark Invest’s daily trading data, two of its ETFs purchased $16.3 million worth of Alibaba American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) — marking Cathie Wood’s first major investment in Alibaba since 2021, signaling a potential shift in her approach to Chinese tech equities.

Ark Invest first bought Alibaba shares in 2014, shortly after its IPO. The firm continued investing over the years but stopped adding to its position by September 2021, around the time when China’s internet sector experienced a sharp downturn.

Wood is known for backing disruptive innovation, and this renewed bet on Alibaba aligns with her core philosophy — especially as Alibaba is now riding a powerful AI-driven narrative, with its share price reaching its highest level since late 2021.

Even more encouraging: despite a 92% year-to-date gain, Alibaba may still be unlocking deeper AI potential.

On the same day, at its annual Apsara developer conference in Hangzhou, Alibaba announced a major upgrade to its full-stack AI system, advancing from large models to AI infrastructure, with plans to increase investment beyond the current base of RMB 380 billion.

Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, said that this is the largest investment in computing power and R&D in our history — it will inevitably accelerate the development of more powerful models and deepen AI adoption across applications.

To date, Alibaba’s newly launched Qwen3-Max large language model has outperformed global peers like GPT-5 and Claude Opus 4, ranking among the top three globally.

Additionally, Alibaba Cloud and Nvidia have partnered in the field of physical AI, with Alibaba’s PAI (Platform for AI) set to integrate Nvidia’s PhysX and AI software stack — a collaboration expected to further boost Alibaba’s AI trajectory.