On August 29, 2025, Alibaba released its financial results for the first fiscal quarter ending June 2025. The company’s net profit significantly exceeded market expectations, mainly driven by the steady recovery of its e-commerce business and the high-speed growth of its cloud computing segment. Following the announcement, Alibaba’s U.S. stock price soared by 12.9% on the same day, reflecting a further boost in investors’ confidence in its future development.
Financial reports show that Alibaba’s revenue in the first fiscal quarter reached RMB 247.65 billion, with net profit as high as RMB 43.1 billion—far exceeding the RMB 28.5 billion previously estimated by analysts. Revenue increased by 2% year-on-year, while net profit surged by 78% year-on-year. Alibaba’s management stated that this outstanding performance demonstrates the company’s comprehensive capabilities in continuously optimizing its business strategies, accelerating the layout of new businesses, and driving the growth of core businesses.
Among all segments, the cloud computing business stood out as the biggest highlight in this quarter’s earnings report. Alibaba Cloud’s revenue reached RMB 33.4 billion, growing by 26% year-on-year—marking a significant acceleration compared to the 18% growth rate in the previous quarter. Benefiting from the rapid development of artificial intelligence applications, the proportion of revenue from Alibaba Cloud’s AI-related products among external customers has continued to rise. In the earnings statement, Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba, noted: “Driven by strong AI demand, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group has achieved accelerated revenue growth, and revenue from AI-related products has become an important component of external customer revenue.”
Notably, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Alibaba is developing a new artificial intelligence chip, aiming to fill the gap left by NVIDIA in the Chinese market. Currently, this chip has entered the testing phase, targeting a broader range of AI inference tasks and compatible with NVIDIA’s architecture.
In fact, Alibaba has become a key player in the global AI field. The company has not only launched a number of self-developed AI chips and large AI models but also leveraged Alibaba Cloud to provide AI computing power and solution services to a wide range of enterprise users. It is worth noting that revenue from Alibaba Cloud’s AI-related products has maintained triple-digit year-on-year growth for eight consecutive quarters, indicating the sustained growth momentum of this business. Meanwhile, the EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) of the cloud computing segment increased by 26% year-on-year, with profitability improving in tandem. Management clearly stated that the company’s key strategic focus in the future is to maintain the growth rate of its cloud business above the industry average, so as to achieve long-term leadership.
(Reprinted from China Grid https://news.eccn.com）