Alibaba Boosts E-Commerce Edge with AI, Despite Shrinking Market Share

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA, confronted by a fierce e-commerce market in China, is leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance its competitiveness. 

On Alibaba’s Taobao platform, shoppers can utilize Wenwen, an AI chatbot, for personalized product recommendations, such as a Sony Group Corp SONY camera priced at approximately $650, tailored to the user’s specifications, the Nikkei Asia reports.

Introduced in 2023, Wenwen is powered by Tongyi Qianwen, or Qwen, a large language model developed by Alibaba’s cloud division.

Also Read: Alibaba Stock Dips as Huge Investment Losses In Q4 Overshadow Revenue Growth and Dividend

In addition to aiding shoppers, Alibaba employs generative AI to streamline merchant operations, simplifying tasks like photo editing and virtual model creation. 

Despite these innovations, Alibaba reported a net profit increase of 10% to 79.7 billion yuan ($11 billion) for the fiscal year ending March, with revenue growing 8% to 941.1 billion yuan. 

Although Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall platforms have seen their market share drop from 80% in 2017 to 37% in 2023, CEO Eddie Wu reported double-digit growth in gross merchandise value for these segments in the first quarter of the year. 

Analysts flagged Alibaba’s double-digit year-on-year growth in GMV thanks to discounts. They expect cloud business to record double-digit growth in the back half of fiscal 2025.

BABA stock has lost over 4% in the last 12 months. Investors can gain exposure to the stock via Invesco Golden Dragon China ETF PGJ and ProShares Online Retail ETF ONLN.

Price Action: BABA shares traded higher by 1.18% at $87.72 premarket at the last check on Friday.

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

Alibaba Photo Via Shutterstock