Alibaba is uninvestable as long as the Chinese Communist Party can touch its profits. That lesson came from owning it before, even as @janusrex argues China and Alibaba will deliver great returns in the coming years. x.com
Markos
Founder of Asset Alliance Investment Group
Anthropic's accusation that Alibaba's Qwen lab distilled its frontier models is optically bearish for Alibaba, though no penalties have been enforced. Per Anthropic, the lab used thousands of fake accounts and over 28.8 million exchanges. While penalties are absent, the rewards outweigh the risks for Alibaba if distillation lifts Qwen's market share, as many US AI startups already use Qwen for its cost-effectiveness versus Gemini and others. x.com x.com
Alibaba is tough to hold because it is splitting investment between e-commerce and AI, creating massive execution risk. AI is so capex-hungry that, as Western examples show, Alibaba cannot spread spending and still reach comparable results. The market sees China e-commerce spending, including the quick-commerce race, as having no ROI, and is right. Replies argue Alibaba has no choice; it might still make it, but the risk is that its AI push slows. x.com x.com x.com
Alibaba is a contrarian trade because accelerating demand for relatively cheaper compute is very underappreciated, and China's cloud market is still in its infancy versus the US. Alibaba is a consensus short as upside from closed-source AI looks illusory. x.com x.com
Chinese stocks are uninvestable for long-term investors because the value created goes to the Communist Party, not shareholders. The Chinese index is down 16% since 1991 while the S&P 500 rose 1,570% and the Nasdaq 3,440%, and Alibaba has gained just 27.8% in 12 years since its IPO. When companies grow too strong, the party hits them with megafines, sidelines founders like Jack Ma or blocks game releases as at Tencent, and foreign investors own only VIE contracts, not shares. x.com x.com x.com … Show more
Alibaba is not worth owning while China is cashing in on the war, because a similar P/E to Microsoft does not mean similar risk. x.com
Alibaba is a sleeper AI winner: AliCloud external revenue grew 40% last quarter, and AI product revenue posted its 11th straight quarter of triple-digit growth. Its roughly 5% CXMT stake, bought for 7.6B yuan, is now worth over $20B. The main risk is distillation: Anthropic raised Qwen with Senate Banking in June, and the administration said in April it would act on Chinese labs pulling from US models. Alibaba denies it, but that is a headline waiting to hit. x.com x.com x.com
Alibaba's bull case ignores e-commerce margins being cut in half. A post the author replies to argues the stock is cheap at about 15x forward earnings, with cloud growth accelerating to 36% and management targeting $100 billion in annual cloud and AI revenue. x.com
Alibaba's HK$80 billion share sale looks like a grab-the-money-and-run move before the AI party ends, with base rates set to go ballistic as in 1972-1973. @AKL_019 notes the HK$112.70 price is 39.5% below the 52-week high, and asks why it didn't raise money in late 2025 or early 2026. @stevehou notes Alibaba is selling stock for AI without new highs or market validation of its AI efforts. In capital markets, the stupid but practical reason is usually the right one, as with SpaceX's fundraising. … Show more
Alibaba is worth buying, as it has reached a high value-for-money range. That agrees with a reply summing up the view as simply: buy Alibaba. x.com
Alibaba's $10.2 billion Hong Kong share placement shows its cash burn has caught up with it, and more dilution is likely. Core China ecommerce makes roughly $30 billion of flat EBIT, half of it reinvested in quick commerce to defend share against PDD. Cloud and AI earns $2 billion of EBIT growing 35% but burns about $10 billion a year in AI-model opex. Pro forma EBIT of about $7 billion collapses after $20-25 billion of annual capex, so Alibaba will keep tapping equity markets. x.com