Alibaba Says AI Drives Growth in Retail and Cloud Businesses

Alibaba Group saw its offerings in artificial intelligence (AI) drive growth in both its retail and its cloud businesses during the quarter ended Sept. 30.

“This quarter, our core business segments maintained steady growth guided by our user-first, AI-driven strategy,” Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu said Friday (Nov. 15) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

In its Taobao and Tmall Group, the company saw a steady increase in merchant adoption of its AI-powered marketing tool, Quanzhantui. Alibaba expects merchants to increase their marketing spending on its platform as they see this tool improve their marketing efficiency, according to a Friday earnings release.

Alibaba saw the year-over-year revenue growth of its Cloud Intelligence Group accelerate during the quarter. It saw double-digit growth in its public cloud products, driven in part by growing adoption of AI-related products and triple-digit growth in its AI-related products, per the release.

During the quarter, the company introduced upgrades across its Qwen large model family, including the launch of its open-source Qwen 2.5 series; reduced the charge rate for API calls to make advanced AI technologies more affordable for customers of its Qwen models; and upgraded its AI infrastructure to enhance its scalability and performance, the release said.

The company also highlighted its unveiling this month of its AI-powered search engine for global B2B sourcing, which finds wholesale products in response to businesses’ text or image prompts.

“This new product reimagines international procurement through conversational search, making global sourcing easier for [small- to medium-sized businesses] while improving overall platform transaction efficiency,” Fan Jiang, CEO of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, said during the call.

Wu said during the call that Alibaba believes the AI era is just beginning; “AGI transformation” is in its early stages, and AI is poised to transform not just the digital world but all industries in the physical world.

“As a leading cloud service provider for AI in China, we will continue to invest in advanced technology and AI infrastructure while optimizing operational efficiency,” Wu said. “This will enable us to deliver more reliable and cost-effective AI technologies and products across industries. We believe that as AI penetration grows, Alibaba Cloud’s cloud computing and AI-related products will become the foundational infrastructure that supports development across industries.”