Alibaba Group Holding Limited shares climbed on Friday as investors grew more confident in China’s artificial intelligence prospects. The uptick followed Baidu’s announcement to spin off its AI chip unit, leading to renewed enthusiasm for domestic AI capabilities. Over the past twelve months, Alibaba stock has surged by 73%, reflecting market faith in the company’s strategic focus on AI and technology innovation.

Chinese policymakers have announced plans to invest billions of dollars in local semiconductor research and manufacturing to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers. These initiatives include direct funding for domestic chipmakers and incentives for companies adopting homegrown AI processors. Alibaba’s cloud computing subsidiary is expected to benefit from this policy push, as it partners with chip developers to optimize AI workloads on local hardware.

Alibaba Cloud continues to report triple-digit percentage growth in AI-related revenue, driven by rising enterprise demand and new product launches such as the Qwen3-Max model. Nomura analysts highlight that Alibaba is well positioned to capitalize on accelerating AI adoption across China, citing rapid software innovation, expanding use of AI solutions in consumer applications, and robust policy support. The integration of Qwen models into both cloud services and a unified cross-device platform is anticipated to further strengthen customer engagement and long-term cloud revenue growth.