How Alibaba overcame Beijing’s crackdown to become an AI giant
On a cold November evening in Shanghai in 2020, the world’s largest IPO was abruptly canceled by Chinese regulators.
It was Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of tech giant Alibaba. The company’s founder Jack Ma, one of China’s most famous billionaires, was under scrutiny for comments seemingly criticising the country’s financial regulators.
What followed was four years of pressure on Ma’s empire.
Since the IPO cancelation, more than $400 billion has been wiped off Alibaba’s value, even with a more recent rally. In the months after the failed public listing, Ma retreated from the public eye and Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce player, looked down and out, with management and structure changes bearing little fruit. The moves were not characteristic of the grit the company had shown in the past and a far cry from its strong position now.
But those who know Ma know never to count him out.
“The hallmark of Jack and his personality is that he never gave up,” Brian Wong, a former Alibaba executive and author of “The Tao of Alibaba,” told CNBC.
Wong features in my new show “Built for Billions,” in which I explore Alibaba’s most testing moments and delve into how it grew to become one of the world’s biggest tech companies and one of the most advanced artificial intelligence players.
Understanding Alibaba
I’ve been covering tech for more than a decade with much of my focus centering on China. I lived in the world’s second-largest economy for three years, from October 2018 to December 2021 when Alibaba was undergoing this significant shift. The company’s reach cannot be overstated from its humble beginnings in 1999 as a business to business online marketplace in the early days of the internet.
Now Alibaba’s business touches everything from food delivery to global e-commerce, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Nowhere is the company’s brand and scale more evident than during Singles Day, an annual shopping event pioneered by Alibaba that sees huge discounts and deals across its platforms. What was once a single day of discounts has now become a more prolonged event that runs several weeks.
I have attended Alibaba’s Singles Day in both Shanghai — where it featured a huge gala with celebrities and music performances — and at its headquarters in Hangzhou. The whole company is mobilized as billions of dollars are transacted across its platforms in a short space of time. Those experiences provided a real insight into the scale of the company.
Alibaba has sometimes been compared to U.S. tech giant Amazon. But it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.
“Alibaba now, is seen as a serious player in technology, not just an e-commerce company,” Duncan Clark, an early advisor to Alibaba and chairman of consultancy firm BDA China, told CNBC’s “Built for Billions.”
Pressure and reinvention
After the Ant Group IPO cancelation, Alibaba and indeed all of China’s tech sector faced a reckoning. Beijing began cracking down on domestic tech firms by tightening regulation.
One popular view was that Beijing was concerned about the power the country’s entrepreneurs were wielding.
Ma’s empire endured tightened regulations and even a nearly $3 billion antitrust fine in 2021.
There was a level of soul searching taking place at the company that was now battling a tougher domestic market with a weak consumer and rising challenges from players like PDD and JD.com. How could Alibaba reinvigorate growth? And was Jack Ma done for good?
When I left China in 2021, I was struck by how fixated international markets were with Ma. It was as if his reappearance served as a sign of Alibaba’s standing with the Chinese government. For instance, Alibaba’s stock would jump if Ma was spotted somewhere.
This overshadowed what was happening in the background. Alibaba had undergone one of the biggest restructures in history. But it wasn’t changing the giant’s fortunes. Daniel Zhang, who had succeeded Ma as CEO and eventually chairman some years prior, unexpectedly announced plans to step down in 2023. His successors were two well-respected veterans, current CEO Eddie Wu and President Joe Tsai.
They steadied the ship, refocused the company on its core e-commerce business, while simultaneously investing in AI. The results were a sharp improvement in business, particularly in more recent quarters.
Was Ma gone for good? It seemed not. In February, Ma was among a handful of entrepreneurs who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a rare meeting.
“He’s in his early 60s now, but he’s still pretty vibrant. He has homes and yachts and all that stuff. But one senses that he’s not done yet,” Clark said.
Alibaba quietly turns into AI giant
Amid the turmoil and revival, Alibaba was quietly investing in artificial intelligence behind the scenes. In fact, since 2016 it had been a priority.
“Acceleration happened, really during … the covid years 2019, 2021 when they really started to build their own foundational models and their own chips,” Mark Greeven, professor of management innovation at the International Institute for Management Development told “Built for Billions.”
When OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit the world in late 2022, Alibaba was ready just months later with its own AI offering.
Alibaba’s approach was different to some of its U.S. rivals, instead focusing on open source or open weight AI models which are free for developers to download and use. The company’s models are now among some of the most popular globally for developers to use.
CEO Wu has cemented Alibaba’s commitment to its reinvention as an AI company. In his first letter to employees after taking the reins, Wu called for Alibaba to return to the startup mindset and set two strategic priorities: “user first” and “AI-driven.”
The focus on AI has benefitted the company’s cloud business. It also comes at a time when AI development is being framed as a race between U.S. and Chinese companies and Alibaba is emerging as one of China’s key players.
“Wherever you look, whatever you touch, China is moving closer towards that vision of dominating AI race by 2030, Alibaba is participating and being an important player,” Ashley Dudarenok, a China digital expert and investor told “Built for Billions.”
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
OpenAI will not be allowed use the word “cameo” to name any products or features in its Sora app for a month after a federal judge placed a temporary restraining order for the term on the AI startup.
U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee granted a temporary restraining order on Monday, blocking OpenAI from using the “cameo” mark or similar words like “Kameo” or “CameoVideo” for any function related to Sora, the company’s AI-generated video app.
“We disagree with the complaint’s assertion that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo’, and we look forward to continuing to make our case to the court,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC.
Lee granted the order after OpenAI was sued in October by Cameo, a platform that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. Cameo filed a trademark lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company following the launch of Sora’s “Cameo” feature, which allowed users to generate characters of themselves or others and insert them into videos.
“We are gratified by the court’s decision, which recognizes the need to protect consumers from the confusion that OpenAI has created by using the Cameo trademark,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a statement. “While the court’s order is temporary, we hope that OpenAI will agree to stop using our mark permanently to avoid any further harm to the public or Cameo.”
The order is set to expire on Dec. 22, and a hearing for whether the halt should be made permanent is scheduled for Dec. 19.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI announced a new tool called “shopping research” on Monday, right as consumers will be ramping up spending ahead of the holiday season.
The startup said the tool is designed for ChatGPT users who are looking for detailed, well-researched shopping guides. The guides include top products, key differences between the products and the latest information from retailers, according to a blog.
Users will be able to tailor their guides based on their budget, what features they care about and who they are shopping for. OpenAI said it will take a couple of minutes to generate answers with shopping research, so users who are looking for simple answers like a price check can still rely on a regular ChatGPT response.
When users submit prompts to ChatGPT that say things like, “Find the quietest cordless stick vacuum for a small apartment,” or “I need a gift for my four year old niece who loves art,” they will see the shopping research tool pop up automatically, OpenAI said. The tool can also be accessed from the menu.
OpenAI has been pushing deeper into e-commerce in recent months. The company introduced a feature called Instant Checkout in September that allows users to make purchases directly from eligible merchants through ChatGPT.
Shopping research users will be able to make purchases with Instant Checkout in the future, OpenAI said on Monday.
OpenAI said its shopping research results are organic and based on publicly available retail websites, and that it will not share users’ chats with retailers. It’s possible that shopping research will make mistakes around product availability and pricing, the company said.
Shopping research is rolling out to OpenAI’s Free, Go, Plus and Pro users who are logged in to ChatGPT.
A Tesla logo outside the company’s Tilburg Factory and Delivery Center.
Karol Serewis | Getty Images
Tesla is trying to get its “FSD Supervised” technology approved for use in the Netherlands. But Dutch regulators are telling Tesla fans to stop pressuring safety authority RDW on the matter, and that their efforts will have “no influence” on the ultimate decision.
The RDW issued a statement on Monday directed at those who have been sending messages to try and get the agency to clear Tesla’s premium partially automated driving system, marketed in the U.S. as the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option. It’s not yet available for use in the Netherlands or Europe broadly.
“We thank everyone who has already done so and would like to ask everyone not to contact us about this,” the agency said. “It takes up unnecessary time for our customer service. Moreover, this will have no influence on whether or not the planning is met. Road safety is the RDW’s top priority: admission is only possible once the safety of the system has been convincingly demonstrated.”
The regulator said it will make a decision only after Elon Musk’s company shows that the technology meets the country’s stringent vehicle safety standards. The RDW has booked a schedule allowing Tesla to demonstrate its systems, and said it could decide on authorization as early as February.
Last week, Tesla posted on X encouraging its followers to contact RDW to express their wishes to have the systems approved.
The post claimed, “RDW has committed to granting Netherlands National approval in February 2026,” adding a message to “please contact them via link below to express your excitement & thank them for making this happen as soon as possible.” Tesla said other EU countries could then follow suit.
The RDW corrected Tesla on Monday, saying in a statement on its official website, that such approval is not guaranteed and had not been promised.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Tesla’s FSD-equipped vehicles in October following reports of widespread traffic violations tied to use of the systems.
The cars Tesla sells today, even with FSD Supervised engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.
For years, Musk has promised that Tesla customers would soon be able to turn their existing electric vehicles into robotaxis, capable of generating income for owners while they sleep or go on vacation, with a simple software update.
That hasn’t happened yet, and Tesla has since informed owners that future upgrades will require new hardware as well as software releases.
Tesla is testing a Robotaxi-brand ride-hailing service in Texas and elsewhere, but it includes human safety drivers or supervisors on board who either conduct the drives or manually intervene as needed. Musk has said the company aims to remove human driers in Austin, Texas, by the end of 2025.
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