Why Alibaba Stock Soared Today
Key Points
Alibaba's open-source AI models are growing increasingly popular among developers.
The company's food-delivery business could receive a regulatory boost.
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Shares of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) leaped on Monday, following several positive developments for the Chinese commerce and cloud computing titan.
By the close of trading, Alibaba's stock price was up more than 10%.
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Image source: Alibaba Group.
Alibaba is becoming a formidable force in the AI arena
The South China Morning Post (which is owned by Alibaba) highlighted a report from AIBase showing that Alibaba's Qwen artificial intelligence (AI) models were downloaded more than 700 million times as of this month.
If the report is accurate, that would make Alibaba's models the most popular open-source AI models in the world today, surpassing those offered by OpenAI, Meta Platforms, and other leading AI developers.
According to the report, "Tens of thousands of real-world applications around the globe have been built based on Qwen, marking a historic peak for [Chinese] open-source large models within the international developer community."
Qwen's success could help to fuel the growth of Alibaba's lucrative cloud computing business. Revenue in its cloud division surged 34% year over year to $5.6 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30.
Regulatory pressure may be easing
Alibaba's share price also likely benefited from reports that Chinese regulators were moving to curb a price war raging within the country's food-delivery industry. The new regulatory stance could boost Alibaba's profit margins by increasing compliance costs, according to Bloomberg.
Higher compliance costs favor bigger enterprises like Alibaba, which can spread those costs over their larger revenue bases. The e-commerce colossus's smaller rivals would find it more difficult to afford those costs, thereby reducing competition.
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Joe Tenebruso has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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