Alibaba Shares Slide as $10 Billion AI Expansion Hits Bottom Line

The offering marks the largest primary follow-on deal for a Hong Kong-listed firm this year, trailing only global giants Alphabet and Intel in scale. This capital injection arrives just one week after the company revealed that quarterly net profits plummeted 75% year-over-year, largely driven by the heavy costs of its AI build-out. Alibaba has already exhausted nearly half of its three-year capital expenditure budget, forcing the firm to accelerate its financial planning.

Management is now targeting a two-and-a-half-year payback period on AI investments, down from its original three-year estimate, citing surging demand for cloud services. This spending spree recently saw the launch of a third data center in South Korea, expanding a network that now spans 104 availability zones. These efforts form the core of a broader 380 billion yuan commitment to AI infrastructure that the e-commerce giant pledged late last year.