Alibaba reclaims status as top Chinese tech stock amid AI bets

Alibaba has reclaimed its position as the most popular Chinese tech stock among investors, fueled by aggressive bets on artificial intelligence that have turned skeptics into believers. The $53 billion gamble The inflection point came in February 2025, when Alibaba unveiled plans to invest at least RMB 380 billion, roughly $53 billion, over three years into AI and cloud infrastructure. The commitment, spanning fiscal years 2026 through 2028, has been described as China’s largest private-sector computing project. By September 2025, after the company signaled it would increase AI spending even further, shares climbed nearly 50% within a single month on the Hang Seng Tech Index. Morgan Stanley weighed in with a characteristically punchy assessment, calling Alibaba “the best AI enabler in China.” Cloud revenue backed up the hype. In one reported quarter, Alibaba’s cloud business posted 38% growth. The Qwen offensive Alibaba’s answer has been the Qwen series, a family of large language models that has rapidly evolved into a credible rival to offerings from OpenAI, Google, and Meta. Qwen3.5 launched in February 2026. Qwen3.8-Max, previewed in August 2026, features 2.4 trillion parameters...