TacticScaleWhat Alibaba Does & How It Makes Money (9988.HK)
Updated October 2026 · reflects Alibaba's latest reported financials
China's largest e-commerce, cloud computing and digital services conglomerate. It earns money mainly by charging merchants for marketing reach and technology services on its e-commerce platforms, and by selling cloud infrastructure, platform and AI model services to businesses.
How Alibaba makes money
It earns money mainly by charging merchants for marketing reach and technology services on its e-commerce platforms, and by selling cloud infrastructure, platform and AI model services to businesses. Additional revenue comes from logistics, retail, media and other digital services.
What Alibaba does
Alibaba Group, founded in 1999 and headquartered in Hangzhou, provides technology infrastructure and marketing reach to merchants, brands and retailers in China and abroad. Its core China E-Commerce Group operates Taobao and Tmall, the Taobao Instant Commerce on-demand delivery platform, the 1688.com wholesale marketplace and the Xianyu second-hand goods community. Beyond China, its International Digital Commerce Group runs AliExpress, Trendyol (Turkey), Lazada (Southeast Asia), Daraz (South Asia) and the Alibaba.com B2B marketplace. The Cloud Intelligence Group offers infrastructure-, platform- and model-as-a-service cloud offerings, while other businesses include Amap navigation, Cainiao logistics, Youku video, Freshippo grocery retail and Alibaba Health.
Products & services
- Taobao & Tmall
- Alibaba Cloud
- AliExpress
- Lazada
- 1688.com
- Cainiao
What is Alibaba worth?
A reliable owner-earnings fair value isn't available for this company yet — we'd rather say so than print a number we don't trust.
We show a fair value only when the method is trustworthy. See Alibaba on TacticScale →