Alibaba reveals ambitious AI development strategy

Technology giant Alibaba Group presented impressive financial results for the December quarter, showing significant growth in e-commerce and cloud computing segments. The company successfully implements the “user first” strategy and actively develops artificial intelligence direction, which is already bringing significant results.

Alibaba Cloud division reported revenue growth of 13% to 31.74 billion yuan ($4.35 billion USD). Particularly impressive results were demonstrated by artificial intelligence-related products, which have shown triple-digit growth for the sixth consecutive quarter.

“We expect further acceleration of Cloud Intelligence Group revenue growth through artificial intelligence technologies,” said Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu. He compared AI to “electricity of the future” and cloud computing to the “power grid,” emphasizing the strategic importance of these directions for the company.

An important achievement was the success of the Qwen family of models, which became the most popular open AI solution among developers worldwide. Since its launch in August 2023, more than 90,000 derivative models have been created based on it. The latest version – Qwen2.5-Max – ranked seventh in the global Chatbot Arena ranking, an authoritative platform for evaluating the best language models and AI chatbots.

Cloud business profitability also improved: adjusted EBITA grew by 33% year-over-year thanks to optimization of the product portfolio in favor of higher-margin public cloud services and AI products.

In the e-commerce segment, Taobao and Tmall platforms recorded a 9% growth in customer relationship management revenue to 100.79 billion yuan ($13.81 billion USD). This was facilitated by the introduction of software service fees and the growing popularity of Quanzhantui – an AI-based marketing solution, particularly in demand among small and medium-sized businesses.

Eddie Wu designated the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI) as the company’s “main goal.” “If AGI is achieved, the AI-related industry will likely become the largest in the world,” he emphasized, explaining Alibaba’s massive investments in AI infrastructure and cloud technologies development.