What's Going On With Alibaba Stock Wednesday?

Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA stock is trading lower Wednesday in tandem with Chinese tech stocks, with Hong Kong's benchmark stock index reaching an 11-month low, as a sudden drop in manufacturing fueled concerns about the strength of China's economic recovery. 

Fresh U.S. semiconductor technology sanctions posed an additional bummer on the stocks as China's most prominent AI and cloud-computing companies, including Alibaba and ByteDance, had placed orders to deliver AI chips worth over $5 billion in 2024. 

Investors turned jittery over the past month courtesy of concerns about China's economy and rising geopolitical risks in the Middle East, SCMP reports.

However, on the positive front, geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S. showed signs of easing as Xi and his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, will likely meet face-to-face in San Francisco in November.

Meanwhile, Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai highlighted the significant role of Alibaba Cloud in the operations of Chinese tech firms and the country's AI development in his first public speech as chairman. 

He revealed that 80% of China's tech companies and half of the large AI language model companies operate on Alibaba Cloud. 

At the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Tsai expressed the company's ambition to be the most open cloud in the AI era, aiming to make AI development and usage more accessible and affordable, SCMP reports.

Tsai emphasized Alibaba Cloud's commitment to transforming AI into a significant productivity tool, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. 

At the Apsara conference, Alibaba Cloud unveiled Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, the latest version of its AI large language model, designed to train AI applications like chatbots. 

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.74% at $81.93 premarket on the last check Wednesday.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.