Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA; HKEX: 9988) is a Chinese technology conglomerate, founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, that operates e-commerce marketplaces, cloud computing, logistics, and digital media businesses. Its platforms include the wholesale marketplaces Alibaba.com and 1688.com, the consumer marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, the cross-border storefronts AliExpress and Lazada, Alibaba Cloud, the Cainiao logistics network, and the Ele.me food-delivery service, serving consumers, merchants, manufacturers, and enterprises.
Jack Ma and 17 co-founders started the company from Ma's apartment as a business-to-business marketplace linking Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers, with early backing from Goldman Sachs and 📝SoftBank. In 2003 it expanded into consumer commerce with Taobao and into online payments with Alipay, which later became part of the affiliated Ant Group. Its September 2014 listing on the New York Stock Exchange raised $25 billion, then the largest IPO in history, and it added a Hong Kong listing in November 2019. Alibaba competes with JD.com and PDD Holdings in China and with 📝Amazon in global commerce and cloud services; Joseph Tsai serves as chairman and Eddie Wu as chief executive. Through Alibaba Cloud it also builds 📝Qwen, one of the most widely adopted open-weight large-language-model families, and releases open-source speech models such as 📝SenseVoice.