Why Did Alibaba Stock Jump 9%? Nvidia Partnership and More

Alibaba stock jumped 9% on the Hong Kong exchange to a four-year high on September 24, according to Yahoo Finance. So, what spurred the investors? The surge came after the company used its Apsara 2025 conference to announce a partnership with Nvidia, a global expansion of its data centers, and a new suite of large language models (LLMs).

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. ADR listed in the US mirrored the rally in pre-market trading as per MarketWatch data, proof that investors finally see a strategy with teeth. Let’s break down what this Alibaba-Nvidia partnership holds, and why are investors so invested.

Nvidia partnership and why it matters to Alibaba

Alibaba Cloud’s tie-up with Nvidia covers physical AI capabilities like training, simulation, and validation. For a market where compute is the scarcest resource, this is about securing GPU access and signaling credibility to enterprise buyers. 

Export curbs on high-end chips still hang over every Chinese AI company, but even the hint of a priority lane into Nvidia’s ecosystem matters. Enterprises signing multi-year cloud contracts want to know their provider won’t be rationing GPUs six months in.

Data center expansion goes global

Alibaba’s footprint already spans 91 facilities across 29 regions. Now it is adding Brazil, France, and the Netherlands immediately, with Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai in the pipeline. This global spread isn’t vanity. AI workloads need low latency, local compliance, and sovereignty guarantees. 

Multinational companies won’t run sensitive AI projects out of Hangzhou, China if regulators demand local processing. So by planting flags worldwide, Alibaba positions itself as the only Chinese cloud player with a realistic shot at global AI contracts.

• Latency reduction means smoother enterprise deployments.
• Data residency compliance (GDPR, local privacy laws) is covered.
• Sovereignty, crucial for Europe and the Middle East, box ticked

Qwen3-Max and Qwen3-Omni — Alibaba’s model arsenal

Alibaba also unveiled Qwen3-Max, a model with over one trillion parameters. Benchmarks show it outperforming rivals like Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in code generation and agent-style behavior. Translation: fewer prompts, more autonomous action. That’s the holy grail for enterprise automation tech because it means that this AI doesn’t need babysitting.

Then came Qwen3-Omni, a multimodal system targeting AR/VR, smart glasses, and in-car cockpits. It is less about immediate revenue and more about staking ground in hardware-adjacent AI. Tencent will lean on its gaming IP, Baidu on its search ecosystem; Alibaba is trying to build models sticky enough to anchor new categories.

Cloud revenue and financial signals

The real proof that AI is already monetizing lies in Alibaba’s financials. Cloud Intelligence revenue rose 26% year-over-year to RMB 33.4B in the June quarter. Adjusted EBITA also climbed 26% to RMB 2.95B. Cloud is now Alibaba’s fastest-growing unit, outpacing its slowing commerce business. 

In China, Alibaba holds roughly one-third of the cloud market, about 33% share versus Huawei’s 18% and Tencent’s 10%. That lead is wide enough to give the company room to double down on AI without immediately losing its crown.

Alibaba Announcements vs impact

Source: Alibaba Earnings Report, Reuters

Risks Alibaba can’t spin away

Chip supply is the first risk for Alibaba. Washington has repeatedly tightened export rules on Nvidia’s advanced GPUs. Beijing has added its own scrutiny on Nvidia chip sales. Alibaba’s overseas data center plan provides a workaround, but it is not bulletproof. If Nvidia capacity is soaked up by U.S. giants, especially with its recent $100B OpenAI deal, Alibaba could still face shortages.

Competition is just as nasty for the Jack-Ma founded company. Huawei Cloud is climbing fast with state-backed momentum. Tencent leans on its consumer ecosystem to drive adoption. Baidu’s ERNIE model still has mindshare. Alibaba’s 33% market share looks good on a chart, but the fight will move to vertical AI solutions, bundled pricing, and long-term lock-ins. Expect lower margins if it escalates.

Capex is another elephant. RMB 380B committed over three years is hyperscaler-level spending. The math only works if utilization rates stay high and if attach rates for higher-margin services like analytics, fraud detection, agent tools rise. Otherwise, those data centers become very expensive space heaters.

What investors need to track over the next year

• How fast Brazil, France, and Netherlands facilities go live, and whether they’re GPU-rich or CPU placeholders.
• Any disclosure of AI revenue as a slice of Alibaba Cloud. Right now, the contribution is opaque.
• Case studies with real logos: logistics routing, advertising optimization, seller tools on Taobao/Tmall. Benchmarks are nice, but revenue contracts are the currency.
• The durability of Nvidia access. If export rules tighten again or Nvidia’s global commitments leave crumbs for Chinese partners, Alibaba’s expansion slows.

Bottom line: A Lot of Wait & Watch for Alibaba

The 9% jump in Alibaba stock wasn't based on random speculation. Investors saw Alibaba tell a coherent story: Nvidia collaboration for compute, global data centers for reach, trillion-parameter models for credibility, and hard cloud numbers showing monetization. However, the truth remains that risks including chip politics, ferocious competition, and massive capex loom. But at least the strategy isn’t smoke anymore. If those new data centers light up with GPUs and enterprise adoption follows, Alibaba Cloud could be China’s only real contender at the global AI table. If not, all that money just bought louder fans and higher power bills.

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