One bright spot in Alibaba’s latest earnings report was its international e-commerce business unit, which posted revenue of 28.5 billion Chinese yuan ($4 billion) in the December quarter, up 44% from a year ago. Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group includes platforms like AliExpress, Lazada, Daraz and Trendyol.
“The strong performance was driven by solid growth across all of AIDC’s retail platforms, especially from the crossborder AliExpress Choice business,” the company said.
Meanwhile, revenue from the company’s core e-commerce businesses Taobao and Tmall Group was $18.1 billion, growing only 2% year-over-year.
“We will step up investment to improve users’ core experiences to drive growth in Taobao and Tmall Group and strengthen market leadership in the coming year. We will also focus our resources on developing public cloud products and sustaining the strong growth momentum in international commerce business,” Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, said earlier this month.
The tightening of the ship is likely designed to consolidate growth trajectories, de-risk uncertainties of operating in multiple, competitive markets …
Despite AIDC’s strong sales growth, losses also surged year-over-year mostly from “increased investment in businesses, including AliExpress’ Choice and Trendyol’s international business, partly offset by improvements in monetization.”
Subsidiary shakeup
The quarterly results follow a series of management shuffles at Alibaba and its subunits. Pakistan e-commerce platform Daraz replaced its CEO Bjarke Mikkelsen on Jan. 24. James Dong, CEO of Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lazada Group, was named as Daraz’s acting CEO. The company said he would “work on a deeper integration between Daraz and our sister companies.”
In early January, Lazada executed a mass layoff across Southeast Asia, which affected employees of all levels including senior management. The cuts hit all departments including commercial, retail and marketing.
People at Alibaba International familiar with the matter told CNBC that the Lazada layoffs were intended to “streamline decision-making and boost organizational and business efficiency.”
“These latest management shake-ups have their roots in the Alibaba split last year, largely a strategy to navigate the regulatory developments in China which have long put pressure on the tech giant,” said Yinglan Tan, founding managing partner at Insignia Ventures Partners.
“AIDC’s nature as a portfolio of diverse and individually complex businesses ranging from Daraz to Lazada also plays a key factor. The tightening of the ship is likely designed to consolidate growth trajectories, de-risk uncertainties of operating in multiple, competitive markets …,” said Tan.
Leadership changes
In March, Alibaba had said it would split itself into six business units and pave the way for individual stock listings. Zhang told investors the move would allow Alibaba’s business “to become more agile, enhance their business decision-making, and respond faster to market changes.”
“Keeping their organisations agile and adaptable is always at the top of the agenda of Chinese tech leaders. This has been made even more urgent with the rise of competitors and changes in the external environment,” said Momentum Works in a January report titled “Understanding Alibaba’s most radical changes in history.”
Mirroring its parent company’s moves, Lazada’s leadership team has also seen its fair share of changes in recent years.
Dong took over as Lazada Group CEO from Chun Li in June 2022, after running the company’s Thailand and Vietnam operations. Prior to that, Dong was head of globalization strategy and corporate development at Alibaba Group and a one-time business assistant to former CEO Zhang.
In 2020, Li took over the role from Pierre Poignant, who succeeded Lucy Peng in December 2018, who was just nine months into the job.
China-based PDD Holdings reported third-quarter revenue nearly doubled, far outpacing Alibaba‘s 9% growth during the same period. PDD said revenue in the quarter was $9.44 billion, up 94% from $4.99 billion in the same quarter of 2022. Alibaba posted 9% year-on-year revenue growth in the third quarter to about $31 billion.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares have plunged from an all-time high of 309.4 Hong Kong dollars ($39.59) on Oct. 28, 2020, according to LSEG data. Shares closed at HK$71.50 on Monday.
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Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.