Alibaba's Revenue Jumps 9% as AI Cloud Growth Hits 45%—But a Profit Plunge Sends Shares Lower

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. reported fiscal first-quarter revenue of 268.95 billion yuan ($40 billion), up 9% year-over-year and narrowly beating analyst estimates, but net income plunged 75% to 10.44 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) as capital expenditure surged 75% to 67.7 billion yuan ($10 billion), sending U.S.-listed shares down as much as 5%. Alibaba Cloud's external revenue growth accelerated to 45%, with AI-related product revenue reaching 12.38 billion yuan ($1.82 billion) for its 12th consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth, driven by CEO Eddie Wu's full-stack AI commercialization strategy.

In brief - Alibaba's fiscal first-quarter revenue rose 9% year-over-year to 268.95 billion yuan $40 billion , narrowly beating the 268.88 billion yuan analyst estimate, while net income fell 75% to RMB 10.44billion $1.6 billion . - Alibaba Cloud's external revenue growth accelerated to 45%, and AI-related product revenue logged its 12th straight quarter of triple-digit growth, reaching 12.38 billion yuan $1.82 billion . - Capital expenditure jumped 75% to 67.7 billion yuan $10 billion , pushing free cash flow to a $6.6 billion outflow; U.S.-listed shares fell as much as 5% before paring the drop to roughly 3.5%. Chinese tech titan Alibaba reported https://www.marketscreener.com/news/alibaba-beats-quarterly-revenue-estimates-ce7859d3d98ef421 fiscal first-quarter revenue of 268.95 billion yuan, roughly $40 billion, on Thursday, up 9% year-over-year and slightly ahead of the 268.88 billion yuan analysts expected. It's the fastest quarterly growth rate the company has posted in roughly three years. Almost all of it traces back to one business line: cloud and AI. The cloud division is where the growth is coming from. Alibaba Cloud's external revenue growth accelerated to 45%, and AI-related product revenue hit 12.38 billion yuan $1.82 billion —its 12th consecutive quarter of triple-digit year-over-year growth. CEO Eddie Wu attributed the quarter's strength to improving commercialization of the company's full-stack AI push, according to Alibaba's earnings statement https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/alibaba-group-announces-june-quarter-093100015.html . That push isn't cheap. Capital expenditure jumped 75% to 67.7 billion yuan $10 billion , which Alibaba tied mainly to climbing chip prices and expanding compute capacity as AI demand outpaces supply. Free cash flow swung to an outflow of more than $6.6 billion for the quarter, according to Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-20/alibaba-s-revenue-climbs-9-in-testament-to-china-s-ai-boom . Wall Street's reaction was immediate. Alibaba's U.S.-listed shares fell around 5% https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/20/alibaba-cloud-revenue.html shortly after the opening bell, before recovering by midday. The AI monetization play Alibaba's cloud numbers arrive as the company leans harder into distributing its Qwen models rather than just training them. Earlier this month, Alibaba gave away Qwen 3.8-Max https://decrypt.co/374906/alibaba-best-ai-model-qwen-free-claude-chatgpt , its most capable model, as open weights for the first time at that scale. In April, it shut down the free tier https://decrypt.co/364501/alibaba-shuts-down-free-tier-qwen-code of its Qwen Code coding agent. The company is also expanding beyond China's borders. Apple is pairing its in-house model https://decrypt.co/375724/apple-alibaba-build-ai-model-china with Alibaba's Qwen to bring Apple Intelligence to Chinese iPhones, a deal that could make Apple the first foreign company allowed to run a proprietary AI model inside China. That distribution bet is already showing up in the numbers: Chinese open-weight models jumped from under 2% of tokens generated on OpenRouter in late 2024 to roughly 61% by mid-2026, even as Alibaba's quarterly profit shrinks by three-quarters.