Alibaba announces $10B share placement to boost AI investment

Alibaba just put a price tag on its AI ambitions: $10.2 billion. The Chinese tech conglomerate announced a share placement in Hong Kong worth HK$80 billion, making it the largest primary follow-on offering ever from a Hong Kong-listed company. The timing is telling. Alibaba’s fiscal Q1 2027 results revealed a 75% plunge in net profit, driven by capital expenditures of roughly RMB 67.7 billion (around $9.5 billion). The biggest Hong Kong equity deal, period Shares are being offered at HK$112.70 apiece, a 3.6% discount from the recent closing price. US investors are excluded from the deal entirely. Globally, the offering ranks third-largest this year, trailing only Alphabet and Intel. Demand has been strong enough that Alibaba actually increased the size of the placement due to oversubscription. Sovereign wealth funds have been particularly active buyers. Every dollar raised is earmarked for what the company calls “full-stack AI capabilities.” That covers the entire vertical: custom chip development, data center infrastructure, and AI model deployment. No portion is going to debt repayment or general corporate purposes. Spending like there’s no tomorrow External cloud revenue grew 45...