What's Going On With Alibaba Stock Wednesday?

Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA commanded investor attention as it focused on unlocking shareholder value via its landmark organizational, management restructurings, and artificial intelligence initiatives, including its collaboration with Meta Platforms Inc META.

The stock is trading lower Wednesday amid renewed concerns about China's economy. The banking stocks were under additional pressure after the People's Bank of China (PBOC) reiterated support for the property sector.

Also Read: Key Takeaways From Alibaba's AI Collaboration With Meta Platforms

China's central bank will guide commercial banks to adjust existing mortgage rates and trim down payment ratios to support the ailing property sector during the second half, SCMP reports. 

Citigroup analysts expect the move to hurt banks' net interest margins, profitability and weaken their lending capability.

The move comes significantly when Big Techs, including Alibaba and ByteDance Ltd, are expanding, ramping up plans for potential new acquisitions and accelerating recruitment initiatives.

On the brighter side, Alibaba DAMO Academy recently launched an AI framework called HQTrack with the Dalian University of Technology. 

The framework comprises a Video Multi-Object Segmentation (VMOS) module and a Mask Refinement (MR) module and aims to achieve "high-quality tracking of any object in videos," TechNode reports.

HQTrack, built upon the open-source frameworks DeAOT and HQ-SAM, also enabled the "segmentation of multiple objects in videos." 

The AI framework caters to various fields like facial recognition, intelligent driving, and surveillance tracking.

Alibaba also attracted over 2 million AI developers into its "Model as a Service" platform called ModelScope, which has accumulated over 1,000 large models since its establishment last June, TechNode cites Vice President Ye Jieping. 

The platform gathers open-source models from Chinese homegrown firms, including Sogou founder's Baichuan models and models developed by foreign enterprises, like Meta's recently released Llama 2, which has recorded over 45 million cumulative model downloads.

However, concerns loom over a recovery in the Chinese economy triggered by the pandemic regulations and regulatory crackdown on technology companies. Also, U.S.'s additional semiconductor technology sanctions weighed as the world went aggressive over realizing their AI goals.

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 2.32% at $97.78 premarket on the last check Wednesday.