Alibaba Named Top-Tier Software Vendor by APPS RUN THE WORLD in the APPS TOP 500 Market Report

Alibaba Strengths, Domain Expertise, and Key Differentiators

Alibaba Group Holding, also referred to as Alibaba Group, is a prominent Chinese multinational technology company with a focus on e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Established in 1999, Alibaba Group offers a comprehensive suite of consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services through web portals. The company also provides electronic payment services, shopping search engines, and cloud computing services.

Alibaba Group oversees an extensive global portfolio of companies spanning various business sectors. Key entities within its ecosystem include Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, Freshippo, AliExpress, Lazada, Alibaba.com, 688.com, Ele.me, Youku, DingTalk, Alimama, Alibaba Cloud, and Cainiao Network.

Alibaba Cloud provides cloud computing services to online businesses and Alibaba's own e-commerce ecosystem. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, management and application services, big data analytics, a machine learning platform and IoT services.

Alibaba Recent Developments

In April 2025, Alibaba unveiled Qwen 3 — a new and advanced version of its flagship artificial intelligence model, featuring hybrid reasoning capabilities. This move is a direct response to the increasingly intense competition in China’s AI sector. Previously, the company launched the Qwen2.5-Omni-7B model, designed for multimodal processing, including text, images, audio, and video, with the ability to deliver real-time text and voice responses. The model is compact enough for use on mobile devices, opening the door for potential integration into smartphones by major manufacturers such as Apple. Alongside these technological advancements, Alibaba announced a $53 billion investment over the next three years to strengthen its AI and cloud infrastructure — a significant increase compared to previous funding, signaling the company’s strategic focus on next-generation technologies.

Alibaba Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Activities

In January 2025, Alibaba announced the sale of its 73.7% stake in Sun Art Retail Group to private equity firm DCP Capital for approximately USD 1.6 billion. The transaction resulted in a loss of around USD 1.8 billion for Alibaba, which had originally acquired the company in 2020 for USD 3.6 billion.

In December 2024, Alibaba announced the sale of its 99% ownership in the department store chain Intime Retail to Youngor Group and Intime’s management for CNY 7.4 billion (approximately USD 1 billion). This sale resulted in a loss of about USD 1.3 billion for Alibaba, which had initially acquired the company in 2017 for USD 2.6 billion.

Alibaba Customers in ARTW Customer Database

Leveraging a rigorous data-centric research methodology, APPS RUN THE WORLD asks the simple question: Who’s buying Alibaba applications and why? And we provide the answers – supported by decades of research – to our clients around the world. Our Customer database has over 100 data fields that detail company usage of Alibaba and other enterprise apps by function, customer size, industry, location, implementation status, partner involvement, Line of Business Key Stakeholders and IT decision makers contact details. List of Verified Alibaba Cloud customers.

Alibaba Key Enterprise and Cloud Applications

Alibaba Cloud

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Alibaba Direct vs Indirect sales

Alibaba Customers - Breakdown by Geo, Size, Vertical and Product

List of Verified Alibaba Customers

No. of Alibaba Customers: 1.31 billion

No. of Alibaba Enterprise Applications Customers: x

No. of Alibaba Cloud Customers: x

No. of Alibaba Cloud Subscribers: x

Alibaba Group Holding Limited continues to expand its global customer base through various platforms, serving over 1 billion annual active users across its ecosystem, which includes Taobao, Tmall, AliExpress, and Lazada. The 88VIP platform, focused on top consumers, boasts more than 35 million members. Internationally, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group serves 300 million consumers annually, with over 1 million merchants as part of the global network.

In the e-commerce industry, Alibaba Group strengthens its presence through platforms like Taobao and Tmall for the Chinese market, AliExpress, which is popular in Russia, Brazil, and Turkey, and Lazada, which dominates Southeast Asia. In addition to these platforms, Alibaba expands its offerings with Alibaba Cloud, providing cloud services to over 90,000 businesses, and Cainiao, a logistics network serving over 100 million consumers annually.

Geographically, Alibaba has a strong presence in China but also operates globally. With AliExpress and Lazada, the company is active in international markets, while Alibaba Cloud and Cainiao have clients and operations in over 200 countries and regions. Regarding customer size, Alibaba supports more than 10 million small and medium-sized businesses through its platforms, while large brands like Apple and Xiaomi achieve significant results on Taobao and Tmall, as seen during Singles' Day 2024, when they generated over 1 billion yuan in sales.

Alibaba Market Opportunities, M&A and Geo Expansions

With the growing global demand for cloud solutions, Alibaba can capitalize on the increased adoption of cloud technologies, particularly in industries such as finance, retail, and logistics. Expanding cloud services in regions outside of China, such as Southeast Asia and Europe, presents significant growth opportunities.

Alibaba is making significant investments in artificial intelligence, particularly through its AI solutions on platforms like Taobao and Tmall.

Alibaba Risks and Challenges

Alibaba Cloud faces the significant challenge of global expansion beyond the Asia-Pacific region, competing with major Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and IBM.

Alibaba Ecosystem, Partners, Resellers and SI

Over the past year, Alibaba has expanded its global partnerships to strengthen its AI capabilities and e-commerce presence. Notably, it partnered with Apple to integrate Alibaba's AI technology into iPhones sold in China, aligning with local regulatory requirements and enhancing Apple's competitiveness in the region. In South Korea, Alibaba and E-mart announced a joint venture combining AliExpress Korea and Gmarket, aiming to enhance customer experience and competitiveness in the e-commerce sector. Additionally, Alibaba became the official B2B e-commerce partner for UEFA EURO 2024 in the U.S. and China, providing small and medium-sized enterprises with opportunities to leverage increased demand during the tournament. The company also collaborated with LVMH to integrate AI tools into clienteling systems in China and launched the "Partner Rainforest Plan" with firms like Telkom Indonesia and Yell Group to foster innovation in AI and cloud computing. Furthermore, Alibaba continues its long-term partnership with the International Olympic Committee as the official "Cloud Services" and "E-Commerce Platform Services" partner through 2028, supporting the digital transformation of the Olympic Games.

Research Methodology

Data used in research reports are derived from publicly available documents, continuous surveys of applications vendors, customers, resellers, Independent Software Vendors, systems integrators and other verifiable sources.

Vendor shares and market forecast results are based on a combination of existing databases as well as demand side and supply side research conducted throughout the year with validation from vendors, customers, channel partners and documentations such as earnings releases and 10Q and 10K filings, vertical industry studies, regional and country-level statistics from public and private institutions(i.e. colleges, universities, government agencies and trade associations).

For additional information on our methodologies, here's the link: