Eddie Wu

Stories

Alibaba prices $10.2 billion share placement for AI buildout

Bought 350,000 shares worth about HK$40 million after the placement

Alibaba's Hong Kong shares fell as much as 10% Monday after the company priced an HK$80 billion (US$10.2 billion) placement of new shares to bankroll its artificial intelligence buildout. The company sold 710 million shares at HK$112.70 each, an 8.4% discount to Friday's close.

Updated Aug 25

Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Max as open weights, undercutting US model pricing

New Capabilities

Leading Alibaba's foundation-model task force

Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max weights landed on Hugging Face on August 12, nine days after the API launch. The download is smaller than promised: it skips the 1-million-token context and image input of the hosted model, and the 27-billion-parameter version has not shipped.

Updated Aug 14

Notable Quotes

The expected payback on AI-related investments was on track to fall to 2.5 years from 3 years, driven by surging demand. (Reported by Reuters from the August earnings call)

from Alibaba prices $10.2 billion share placement for AI buildout · Updated Aug 25

Wu has said Alibaba remains committed to open-source models while ramping up AI spending.

from Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Max as open weights, undercutting US model pricing · Updated Aug 14