Alibaba Stock Gains. How It Plans to Rival Nvidia on AI Chips. — Barrons.com

Alibaba Group Holding’s (BABA) American Depository Receipts (ADRs) were up more than 5% in Thursday’s pre-market trade after a report stated that the company is planning to list its AI chipmaking unit.

According to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, Alibaba initially plans to restructure the unit, T-Head, as a business partly owned by the company’s employees.

Subsequently, Alibaba will consider launching an initial public offering, although the timeline is not known yet, the report added. Alibaba’s IPO plans for T-Head are still in the early stages, so finer details about the valuation are not certain yet.

Taking On US Dominance

Reports of Alibaba taking its chipmaking unit public come amid ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China, especially in the semiconductor space. Concerns in the U.S. date back to former President Joe Biden’s term, which have continued into President Trump’s second term.

Last week, the U.S. announced 25% tariffs on exports of Nvidia Corp.’s (NVDA) H200 AI chip, as well as Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s (AMD) MI325X chip. In December, President Trump announced that tariffs would be levied on Chinese chip imports over what he termed as the country’s “unreasonable” pursuit of dominance in the chip industry. However, these levies have been pushed back to 2027.

On its part, China has been pushing to develop its domestic chip industry. On Wednesday, the China Institute of Atomic Energy successfully developed the country’s first tandem-type high-energy hydrogen ion implanter, named Power-750H, according to a China Daily report. The technology is key in manufacturing advanced power semiconductors.

According to TheFly, analysts at Arete upgraded Alibaba to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ on Wednesday, with a price target of $190. This implies an upside of nearly 13% from the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.

Here’s How Stocktwits Users Reacted

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits about Alibaba was in the ‘neutral’ territory, while the company was the second-most-trending ticker on the platform at the time of writing.

One bullish user called Alibaba’s IPO plans for its AI chipmaking unit great news. “Let’s continue the rally,” the user added.

https://stocktwits.com/Lvly/message/642517239

BABA ADRs are up 14% year-to-date and 98% over the past 12 months.

By Jiahui Huang

Baidu's AI assistant has surpassed 200 million monthly active users, according to people familiar with the matter, as competition intensifies among Chinese tech giants in the AI field.

The company's artificial intelligence-empowered Ernie Assistant is integrated into its flagship Baidu search-engine app and on personal computers.

Ernie Assistant is linked to widely used apps such as JD.com, Meituan and Trip.com, which allows the agent to help book flight tickets, order food delivery, and search for health and legal advice, among others.

Users can ask Ernie Assistant to generate videos and images, and write summaries, among other tasks. Users of the AI assistant have the option to choose different AI models, including DeepSeek or Baidu's own Ernie model. The AI assistant is also linked with the company's Baidu Map and Baidu Health platforms.

ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and other tech companies in China have been investing heavily on AI models and applications.

Last week, Alibaba said it is connecting its Qwen chatbot into its vast consumer ecosystem and allowing it to carry out tasks on users' behalf. The Qwen app surpassed 100 million monthly active users within two months of its November launch, Alibaba said.

Chinese tech giant ByteDance rolled out its first AI-integrated phone in partnership with smartphone maker ZTE in December.

Baidu was the first major Chinese tech company to launch a ChatGPT-like chatbot dubbed Ernie Bot in 2023, but has since faced stiff competition in China from DeepSeek and Bytedance's Doubao.

Write to Jiahui Huang at jiahui.huang@wsj.com

By Jiahui Huang

Baidu's AI assistant has surpassed 200 million monthly active users, according to people familiar with the matter, as competition intensifies among Chinese tech giants in the AI field.

The company's artificial intelligence-empowered Ernie Assistant is integrated into its flagship Baidu search-engine app and on personal computers.

Ernie Assistant is linked to widely used apps such as JD.com, Meituan and Trip.com, which allows the agent to help book flight tickets, order food delivery, and search for health and legal advice, among others.

Users can ask Ernie Assistant to generate videos and images, and write summaries, among other tasks. Users of the AI assistant have the option to choose different AI models, including DeepSeek or Baidu's own Ernie model. The AI assistant is also linked with the company's Baidu Map and Baidu Health platforms.

ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and other tech companies in China have been investing heavily on AI models and applications.

Last week, Alibaba said it is connecting its Qwen chatbot into its vast consumer ecosystem and allowing it to carry out tasks on users' behalf. The Qwen app surpassed 100 million monthly active users within two months of its November launch, Alibaba said.

Chinese tech giant ByteDance rolled out its first AI-integrated phone in partnership with smartphone maker ZTE in December.

Baidu was the first major Chinese tech company to launch a ChatGPT-like chatbot dubbed Ernie Bot in 2023, but has since faced stiff competition in China from DeepSeek and Bytedance's Doubao.

Write to Jiahui Huang at jiahui.huang@wsj.com

BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Baidu Inc. (BIDU, 9888.HK) announced the launch of Apollo Go, its autonomous ride-hailing service, in partnership with AutoGo, a UAE-based autonomous mobility company. The service is now available through the AutoGo app, offering fully driverless rides on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, a designated zone for autonomous operations.

The partnership between Baidu's Apollo Go and K2's AutoGo began in March 2025 with the goal of building Abu Dhabi's largest fully driverless fleet. In November 2025, the companies secured one of the emirate's first permits for fully autonomous commercial operations and signed an agreement to expand the fleet to hundreds of vehicles by 2026.

The initial rollout covers Yas Island, a major leisure and entertainment hub. Expansion will follow in phases, beginning with Reem Island, Al Maryah Island, and Saadiyat Island. Over time, the service will extend across additional areas, with the long-term objective of operating throughout the wider Abu Dhabi emirate.

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By George Glover

China's Alibaba is following the example of U.S. rivals OpenAI, Alphabet, and Microsoft by enabling its artificial-intelligence app to go shopping for users.

The online retailer said at a launch event on Thursday that it has connected its Qwen AI app to its core ecosystem, including its own e-commerce and online travel agency platforms.

The update will allow users to instruct Qwen to carry out tasks like ordering groceries and booking flights, without having to leave the app.

Alibaba stock didn't get much of a boost from the rollout.

The company's American depositary receipts slid 0.2% ahead of Thursday's U.S. open. They are up 16% already in 2026, surging higher thanks to surging AI demand in China and hopes that Beijing will roll out a stimulus package to boost the Asian nation's economy.

AI providers have expanded into shopping as part of a push to develop agentic AI systems — referring to tools that can take action on users' behalf, rather than merely generate content from prompts.

OpenAI's ChatGPT announced a feature called Instant Checkout in September, allowing a user to talk to ChatGPT to decide what to buy, then complete the transaction a few clicks later without leaving the chatbot. OpenAI partnered with Stripe for payments, and Walmart, Etsy, and Shopify for products.

Shopify has also partnered with Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot to enable AI-native shopping on those two platforms. Google on Sunday unveiled a slew of agentic AI tools for retailers including home-improvement chain Lowe's.

Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

By Tracy Qu

Alibaba Group is rolling out a major update of its Qwen app, integrating the chatbot into its ecosystem and allowing it to carry out tasks on users' behalf.

With the update, users can ask Qwen to perform actions such as ordering milk tea and booking flights, rather than navigating different apps by themselves. Alibaba has connected the Qwen app to the company's core ecosystem, including e-commerce platform Taobao and online travel agency Fliggy. This means users can complete transactions entirely within Qwen without navigating to other Alibaba apps, though this functionality is only supported for food-delivery transactions for now.

"What we are launching today represents a shift from models that understand to systems that act--deeply connected to real-world services," said Wu Jia, a vice president at Alibaba, during at a launch event in Hangzhou, China, on Thursday.

The Qwen app also debuted a new "task assistant" feature, currently available for invited users. The assistant can help users to make phone calls, or process up to 100 documents simultaneously.

The rollout reflects Alibaba's broader push to turn Qwen from a standalone chatbot to an entry point for its consumer internet ecosystem, as large technology companies race to develop AI systems that can move beyond answering questions to executing real-world tasks across multiple services.

The move comes amid a global push to make AI systems more agent-like. In October, OpenAI integrated a number of apps that users can interact with inside the chatbot, such as music-streaming app Spotify and travel agency Booking.com.

Launched in November, the Qwen app has surpassed 100 million monthly active users within two months of its release.

Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com