Alibaba Group co-founder Jack Ma purchased shares worth approximately $76.5 million in the past week, joining company executives in a show of confidence following a sharp stock decline. The purchases, valued at over 600 million Hong Kong dollars, were disclosed by a person familiar with the matter.
Ma’s acquisition follows separate purchases by Alibaba President Joe Tsai and CEO Eddie Wu, who together bought shares worth at least $25 million. The coordinated buying helped lift Alibaba’s stock by as much as 3.2% on Wednesday, partially reversing weekly losses after the company completed the largest capital raise in Hong Kong’s history, raising 80 billion Hong Kong dollars.
The capital infusion underscores Alibaba’s aggressive push to bolster its artificial intelligence capabilities amid growing competition in China’s AI sector. The company has committed to investing over 380 billion yuan, or $56.5 billion, in AI over the next three years, covering chips, data centers and large language model development. Alibaba’s Qwen model family has emerged as the world’s most popular open-source AI model, reinforcing its position as a leader in the field.
However, the heavy investment focus has pressured profitability, with margins declining as the company diverts resources from its core e-commerce business. Alibaba’s second-quarter investments in AI and related infrastructure surged to nearly $10 billion, up from $7.3 billion in the prior period. Executives have stated that the company expects to break even on its AI investments within three years, targeting annualized AI revenue of nearly $10 billion for the current quarter, compared with $7.3 billion in the April-June period.
The recent stock purchases by Ma and other executives follow weeks of volatility, driven in part by concerns over declining profitability amid the company’s strategic shift toward AI and away from its traditional e-commerce dominance.
