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Despite having stepped down as executive chairman of Alibaba in 2019, Mr. Ma remained an influential figure at the company and is active in deciding its strategy, the people said. In recent months, he held calls with Alibaba’s top executives, including the current chairman and chief executive Daniel Zhang, urging them to split up the company, saying it would make it more nimble and competitive in China’s increasingly crowded market, the people said. Mr. Ma on Monday made a surprise visit to…

Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA -0.90% plans to split its business into six independently run entities, the biggest structural overhaul in its history—announced a day after co-founder Jack Ma was seen back in mainland China after almost a year overseas. Alibaba Group will become a holding company overseen by current Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel Zhang,…

Alibaba’s quarterly revenue rose 2% from a year earlier to the equivalent of $35.9 billion, slower than the 3% expansion in the previous quarter, the company said Thursday.  Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was the equivalent of $6.8 billion, up 69% from the same period a year before. Alibaba’s net profit was dented a year before partly due to an impairment of goodwill related to its digital media and entertainment segment.  While the revenue results were largely in line with forecasts,…

The viral popularity of ChatGPT has stirred a frenzy within China where tech companies, battered by a two-year regulatory clampdown and the Covid-19 pandemic, have been seeking new sources of growth. Search engine owner Baidu Inc., e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and social-media conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. are among those that have announced investments to develop their own equivalents to the artificial-intelligence chatbot, which isn’t available in China. Stocks of other…

Activist investor Ryan Cohen has built a stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA 3.41% worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is privately pushing the Chinese e-commerce giant to accelerate and further boost its share-repurchase program, according to people familiar with the matter.  While the stake is small in comparison to Alibaba’s market capitalization of nearly $300 billion, Mr. Cohen has a wide following among individual investors…

SINGAPORE—Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA 3.41% started allowing shoppers in Europe to pay for purchases on its international e-commerce platform only after receiving their merchandise, in an attempt to boost global sales as growth at home slows.  On Monday, a fintech company called Splitit Payments Ltd. SPT 22.22% said it would join with Ant Group Co.’s Alipay…

SINGAPORE—Chinese authorities recently acquired a stake in a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA 3.39% , indicating regulators intend to keep the sector on a tight leash even as they move past an extended crackdown on the country’s internet-technology giants.A Beijing-based entity controlled by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet watchdog, took a 1% stake in a Guangzhou, south China-based Alibaba business on Jan. 4, according to…

Billionaire Jack Ma is ceding control of Ant Group Co., capping a tumultuous period for the Chinese fintech giant. Mr. Ma will no longer be the controlling person of Ant, the company said in a statement on Saturday, confirming a previous report by The Wall Street Journal. The changes are being made to reduce Ant’s reliance on the flamboyant Chinese billionaire, who co-founded Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA…

SINGAPORE—A top Chinese official said authorities have wrapped up investigations into the financial businesses of several internet companies, another strong signal that a two-year regulatory crackdown on China’s homegrown technology giants may be winding down. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, told state media that the government had concluded a campaign to “rectify the financial businesses of 14 platform…

HONG KONG—China is implementing new rules to restrict the production of ‘deepfakes,’ media generated or edited by artificial-intelligence software that can make people appear to say and do things they never did.Beijing’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, will begin enforcing the regulation—on what it calls “deep synthesis” technology, including AI-powered image, audio and text-generation software—starting Tuesday, marking the world’s first comprehensive attempt by a major regulatory agency to…