An Alibaba Group sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, July 6, 2023.
Aly Song | Reuters
Alibaba plans to list its logistics unit Cainiao on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the Chinese e-commerce giant said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
Alibaba will continue to hold more than 50% of the shares of Cainiao after the spinoff.
The move is part of one of the most radical shake-ups in Alibaba’s history. In March, the company said it will split its structure into six business units, the majority of which will be able to raise outside funds and go public.
Cainiao is the first of these businesses to officially file for an initial public offering (IPO). Alibaba said that there is “no assurance” that the proposed spinoff will take place.
Alibaba said the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has confirmed that the Cainiao listing may go ahead. The exchange declined to comment on individual listings.
Details have yet to surface on the pricing of shares or on the expected listing date.
Founded in 2013, Cainiao is a logistics network that helps Alibaba fulfil deliveries placed on its e-commerce platforms both in China and abroad. Alibaba aims to fulfil consumer orders within 24 hours in China and within 72 hours anywhere else in the world.
The company took a majority stake in Cainiao in 2017 and holds a nearly 70% interest as of Tuesday.
Delivery speed is a point of competition among Chinese e-commerce firms. Alibaba rival JD.com has focused on same-day delivery to boost the appeal of its platform among Chinese shoppers.
Alibaba said the IPO will enhance Cainiao’s “standalone profile among its customers, suppliers and potential strategic partners, which will help Cainiao to be in a better position to negotiate and solicit more business.”
The Chinese giant added said that the listing will “lead to a more direct alignment of the responsibilities and accountability of the management” of both Alibaba and Cainiao with their operating and financial performance.
The Cainiao IPO plans come after Alibaba announced a major leadership reshuffle in June, when former CEO Daniel Zhang stepped down and was replaced by Eddie Wu. Zhang, who retained leadership of the cloud computing unit, then made a surprise move this month to exit that business. Wu took over as the head of Alibaba’s cloud division.
As part of the offering, Circle is offering its underwriters a 30-day option to buy an additional 1.5 million shares.
Circle shares closed Tuesday up 1.3% after the company reporting its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company. While charges tied to its IPO weighed on its second-quarter results and led to a loss of $4.48 per share, it saw revenue rise 53% on the back of strong stablecoin growth.
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Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
CoreWeave shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday even as the provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure beat estimates for second-quarter revenue
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: Loss of 21 cents
Revenue: $1.21 billion vs. $1.08 billion expected
Revenue more than tripled from $395.4 million a year earlier, CoreWeave said in a statement. The company registered a $290.5 million net loss, compared with a $323 million loss in second quarter of 2024. CoreWeave’s earnings per share figure wasn’t immediately comparable with estimates from LSEG.
CoreWeave’s operating margin shrank to 2% from 20% a year ago due primarily to $145 million in stock-based compensation costs. This is CoreWeave’s second quarter of full financial results as a public company following its IPO in March.
CoreWeave pointed to an expansion in business with OpenAI, a major client and investor. Also during the quarter, CoreWeave acquired Weights and Biases, a startup with software for monitoring AI models, for $1.4 billion.
In May, management touted 420% revenue growth, alongside widening losses and nearly $9 billion in debt. The stock still doubled anyway over the course of the next month.
CoreWeave shares became available on Nasdaq at the end of the first quarter, after the company sold 37.5 shares at $40 each, yielding $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was trading at $148.75 for a market cap of over $72 billion.
A CoreWeave data center project with up to 250 megawatts of capacity is set to be delivered in 2026, the company said in the statement.
Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) invites Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to speak in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
The Trump administration is still working out the details of its 15% export tax on Nvidia and AMD and could bring deals of this kind to more companies, the White House’s Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
“Right now it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” said Leavitt, the White House’s spokesperson.
“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” she continued.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he had negotiated a deal with Nvidia in which the U.S. government approves export licenses for the China-specific H20 AI chip in exchange for a 15% cut of revenue. Advanced Micro Devices also got licenses approved in exchange for a proportion of its China sales, the White House confirmed.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said Monday.
“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets,” Nvidia said in a statement this week.
Trump said the export licenses for AMD and Nvidia were a done deal. But lawyers and experts who follow trade have warned that Trump’s deal may be complicated because of existing laws that regulate how the government can charge fees for export licenses.
The Commerce Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The H20 is Nvidia’s Chinese-specific chip that is slowed down on purpose to comply with U.S. export relations. It’s related to the H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S., and was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on artificial intelligence chips in 2023.
Earlier this year, Nvidia said that it was on track to sell more than $8 billion worth of H20 chips in a single quarter before the Trump administration in April said that it would require a license to export the chip.
Trump signaled in July that he was likely to approve export licenses for the chip after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the White House.
The U.S. regulates AI chips like those made by Nvidia for national security reasons, saying that they could be used by the Chinese government to leapfrog U.S. capabilities in AI, or they could be used by the Chinese military or linked groups.
The Chinese government has been encouraging local companies in recent weeks to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips for any government or national security-related work, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.