What's Going On With Alibaba Stock Monday?

Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA continues to make headlines with its business restructuring attempts to unlock shareholder value. The company reportedly closed its quantum computing research lab, indicating a shift towards cost-cutting measures.

The company plans to donate the lab's equipment to Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is headquartered, Bloomberg reports. Approximately 30 staff members will be affected by the closure, with some potentially finding new roles at the university.

This move is part of a more significant restructuring by Alibaba, led by Joseph Tsai and Eddie Wu, close associates of co-founder Jack Ma, as per Bloomberg report. They recently halted plans to spin off and list the company's cloud services division.

The closure of the quantum computing lab, part of the DAMO Academy founded in 2017, departs from Alibaba's earlier focus on advanced technology research, including the metaverse, robotics, and semiconductor design. 

Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba, has reportedly launched a new venture named "Hangzhou Ma's Kitchen Food" in Hangzhou, his hometown and the base of his business empire. This new company registered with a capital of 10 million yuan ($1.4 million), focuses on selling pre-packaged food and processing and retailing edible agricultural products. Another of Ma's ventures wholly owns it, Hangzhou Dajingtou No 22 Arts and Culture, established in 2019 for investment deals in China, SCMP reports.

Jason Pau from the Jack Ma Foundation is the executive director of Ma's Kitchen, which enters the booming ready meals market in China. Despite his reduced role at Alibaba, Ma remains influential, recently selling shares to fund his agricultural and philanthropic projects, coinciding with Alibaba's major corporate restructuring.

Meanwhile, Alibaba is reportedly updating its workplace app, DingTalk, to support Huawei Technologies' HarmonyOS, aligning with Huawei's push for its operating system amidst U.S. sanctions. DingTalk, now a key growth driver for Alibaba, will partner with Huawei in various sectors, such as industrial innovation. This collaboration is part of a broader trend among Chinese tech giants, like JD.com Inc JD and Meituan MPNGF MPNGY, to develop apps for HarmonyOS. Huawei's alternative to Google's Android came after U.S. restrictions hindered its access to American technology, SCMP reports.

DingTalk currently has over 600 million individual users and 23 million enterprises, while HarmonyOS boasts over 700 million devices and 2.2 million developers.

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.29% at $78.26 premarket Monday.

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