Jack Ma is making a full, high-profile comeback.
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Author | Huang Yu
Editor | Wang Xiaojuan
As Alibaba speeds up its journey on the artificial intelligence track, the global asset portfolio of the Jack Ma family continues to expand.
Recently, news that Jack Ma's wife, Zhang Ying, purchased a luxury home in London's Belgravia district last autumn for £19.5 million (about 180 million yuan) has once again attracted widespread attention.
Over the years, the Ma family has made several moves in real estate investment, and last year drew much attention for spending over 200 million in Singapore on properties.
The family's asset expansion and Jack Ma's personal fate can be said to resonate together. In September 2019, Jack Ma announced his formal retirement, stepping down as chairman of Alibaba's board. A year later, he stepped down from the board position, officially fading from the public eye. In 2023, however, Jack Ma returned from Europe, and Alibaba began a sweeping major transformation.
This year, signals of Jack Ma's high-profile full comeback have increased—he has appeared in Alibaba's campuses multiple times and is more involved in strategic decisions. Notably, in February, Jack Ma attended a private enterprise symposium for the first time in years, joining Ren Zhengfei (Huawei), Ma Huateng (Tencent), Lei Jun (Xiaomi), Liang Wenfeng (DeepSeek), Wang Xingxing (Unitree Robotics), and other new and old entrepreneurs under one roof.
With Jack Ma's return, Alibaba employees have regained confidence in "Make Alibaba Great Again." Over the past three years, Alibaba has returned to a startup mode, attacking rapidly in two strategic directions: AI and major consumption, and a more imaginative Alibaba is quickly taking shape.
Charting Alibaba’s New Course
Alibaba once basked in unlimited glory; however, since 2020, its heyday faded. Under the challenges of platform regulation, fighting the pandemic, and consumption downgrade, it fell into the realistic predicament of slow business growth, especially as its core e-commerce business showed fatigue under attacks from competitors like Pinduoduo.
As Alibaba's founder, Jack Ma returned when the company needed him most.
In March 2023, Jack Ma returned to China, and Alibaba launched the largest organizational change in its history—"one splits into six." Each business operates independently and will be split for separate listing. Veterans like Joe Tsai returned to power; Jack Ma also advocated for a return to Taobao and users, to re-engage small and medium merchants.
Though "one splits into six" is now in the past, back then it demonstrated to the outside world Alibaba's determination to reform.
At the end of 2023, the internet industry saw a symbolic moment—Pinduoduo's market value at one point surpassed Alibaba, becoming the largest Chinese concept stock on the US market.
As a once-unnoticed later comer, Pinduoduo dealt a significant blow to Alibaba. At that time, an Alibaba employee lamented on the internal network: “Really shocked. That little-known one who just 'cuts a deal' is almost becoming the big brother.”
As morale at Alibaba flagged, Jack Ma made a rare reply: “We should congratulate Pinduoduo's decisions, execution, and efforts over the past few years. Everyone has had their moment, but the organization that reforms for future and is willing to pay any price and make sacrifices is the one worthy of respect.”
Jack Ma signaled that Alibaba will continue to reform, hoping employees would offer constructive opinions and especially innovative ideas. He said, all great companies are born in winter. The era of AI e-commerce has just started, bringing opportunities and challenges to everyone.
Meanwhile, Jack Ma also put in real money to increase his holdings in Alibaba stocks, to show his optimism about the company’s future.
Earlier this year, Jack Ma attended a private enterprise symposium. Although he did not speak, his participation in this national-level meeting sent a strong signal.
Public information shows that Jack Ma has started to return to Alibaba’s campuses, with his direct involvement in company affairs reaching a five-year high. Reportedly, he asked senior management for business updates three times in one day, with special focus on AI business.
In fact, Jack Ma’s public appearances have increased this year.
On April 10 this year, Jack Ma gave a speech at Alibaba Cloud’s new fiscal year kick-off meeting. On May 9, Alibaba’s 26th anniversary, Ma appeared at the company’s headquarters in a replicated “Lakefront Cottage” (Alibaba's original startup apartment), encouraging employees on site to persist in entrepreneurship and continuous innovation.
Jack Ma's latest public appearance to draw attention was on the evening of September 16, when he was unexpectedly spotted by netizens at the HHB bar in Alibaba’s Digital Ecosystem Innovation Park. The HHB Music Bar was founded by Jack Ma in January 2019, named after "Pingtouge" (Alibaba's semiconductor business) — HHB stands for "Happy Honey Badger", meaning “Happy Pingtouge.”
Coincidentally, that same evening, the self-developed AI chip PPU by “Pingtouge” premiered on CCTV News, with several specifications close to Nvidia's H20. This further made people aware that in this round of global AI competition, Alibaba is already at the cutting edge.
Market Value Returns to 3 Trillion
Together with Jack Ma's return is renewed investor confidence in Alibaba.
So far this year, Alibaba's Hong Kong stock price has climbed more than 90%, with total market value approaching 3 trillion HKD, once again far ahead of Pinduoduo.
Of course, the key driver behind this price surge is major breakthroughs in Alibaba’s transformation.
In November last year, Alibaba merged Taotian Group, International Digital Commerce Group, 1688, Xianyu, and other e-commerce businesses into the Alibaba E-commerce Division, with Jiang Fan as CEO overseeing all domestic and overseas e-commerce businesses. This move is seen as a key step to integrate Alibaba’s e-commerce platform.
Alibaba’s strategy for its e-commerce business has become increasingly clear, with this year’s focus on the “Big Consumption Platform” as its core strategy.
This time, Alibaba chose instant retail as its breakthrough point.
Against this background, in April Alibaba upgraded the instant retail business "Hour Delivery" under Taotian to "Taobao Flash Sale," competing with JD and Meituan in the instant retail market. In June, Fliggy and Ele.me were merged into Alibaba's China E-commerce Division. In July, Hema was added to the primary traffic interface of Taobao, and soon after, Fliggy was also connected to it.
In August, Taobao launched a new major membership plan, integrating Ele.me, Fliggy, Amap, etc.
All these moves have a single aim: to integrate all Alibaba's consumer businesses and upgrade Taobao from an "e-commerce platform" to a "big consumption platform."
Currently, Taobao Flash Sale's performance has met Alibaba's expectations. According to Taotian, this August the peak daily orders reached 120 million, weekly average daily orders reached 80 million, and monthly buyers of flash sales hit 300 million, up 200% from April.
For Taobao’s core e-commerce business, ordering takeout is also a booming business—during the first three weeks in August, monthly active consumers on the Taobao app increased 25% year-on-year.
Jiang Fan, CEO of Alibaba China E-commerce Division, predicts that in the next three years, with a million brand stores settling in, flash sales and instant retail will add 1 trillion yuan in transaction volume to Taobao. The imagination space for this is huge.
In the AI field, which Jack Ma highly values, Alibaba has made “AI + cloud” its other strategic pillar alongside “big consumption.”
Currently, Alibaba has established full-stack technical capability from AI computing power, AI cloud platforms, AI models and applications to open source ecosystem, securing big deals with giants like Apple and BMW.
Alibaba's financial report shows that in FY2026 Q1 Alibaba Cloud revenue increased 26% year-on-year, surpassing the 18% increase of the previous quarter, setting a three-year high, with AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit growth for eight consecutive quarters.
Alibaba is firmly investing in cloud and AI infrastructure. Building on its February plan of 380 billion yuan over three years in AI infrastructure, Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming announced at the September Yunqi Conference even greater planned investment. He also stated that by 2032, Alibaba Cloud’s global data center energy consumption will rise tenfold compared to 2022.
The capital market gave a direct response. That day, Alibaba's Hong Kong stock surged over 9%, hitting its highest since October 2021.
Goldman Sachs said in a report on October 23 that Alibaba's combined capital expenditure for FY2026–2028 will reach 460 billion yuan, much higher than the previous target of 380 billion yuan.
CITIC Securities believes the core of cloud is cost and value-added competition. In the AI era, Alibaba, with models like Tongyi and chip teams like Pingtouge, has enhanced its comprehensive competitiveness compared to the past. Alibaba’s cloud profitability may see a systematic boost, driving a second round of value re-rating.
Founded 26 years ago, Alibaba is undoubtedly fortunate; the booming Chinese internet industry turned it into a tech giant. Now, with the AI era roaring in, under Jack Ma's “new prescription,” whether Alibaba will return to its glory days remains to be seen by the entire industry.
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