Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) is aggressively accelerating its artificial intelligence deployment, a strategy bolstering its cloud business and fueling significant stock appreciation.
The company’s multifaceted AI push is marked by the launch of two new dense visual-language models within the Qwen3-VL family and the internal development of a conversational AI initiative codenamed “Plan C.”
This dual focus on advanced models and strategic cloud expansion positions Alibaba to drive robust revenue growth.
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Advanced Models and Edge AI Deployment
Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen team has unveiled two new dense AI large language models, the 2B and 32B, for its Qwen3-VL suite, substantially enhancing capabilities for visual-language understanding tasks.
These models are engineered for efficiency; the company emphasizes that both are lightweight enough to run on smartphones and are designed to be more “developer-friendly,” as reported by TechNode on Wednesday.
Notably, the Qwen3-VL-32B reportedly rivals the performance of larger systems, including OpenAI’s GPT-5 mini and Anthropic’s Claude 4 Sonnet, while the 2B model facilitates efficient deployment on edge devices.
Simultaneously, Alibaba’s Quark business unit is spearheading an internal AI project, “Plan C,” according to Chinese tech media Sina Tech.
The project, led by Quark’s core team with support from Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab, is centered on developing conversational AI products.
Sources indicate the team has been working on “Plan C” for months as part of a long-term effort linked to model breakthroughs, signaling a direct challenge to ByteDance’s chatbot, Doubao.
Cloud Growth Fuels Stock Gains
The market has reacted positively to Alibaba’s AI and cloud focus, with the stock gaining nearly 97% year-to-date as its strategic investments begin to unlock tangible value.
Analysts overwhelmingly attribute this rebound to the strong performance of Alibaba Cloud.
Goldman Sachs, for example, cited Alibaba Cloud’s full-stack AI capabilities, diversified chip supply, and international expansion as crucial growth drivers, prompting the firm to raise cloud revenue forecasts to 31–38% over the next three fiscal years.
Daiwa Securities highlighted cost optimizations, marketing reductions, and supply-side expansion as factors projected to reduce EBITA losses while forecasting 30% year-over-year revenue growth for Alibaba Cloud.
Furthermore, China International Capital Corporation (CICC) emphasized new AI models, applications, and hardware unveiled at the Apsara Conference, alongside supply-side advantages, as key drivers of sustained revenue and profit growth.
Price Action: BABA stock was trading lower by 0.34% to $166.10 premarket at last check Wednesday.
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