NEW YORK, January 9, 2026, 05:16 (EST) — Premarket
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Hong Kong-listed shares jumped as much as 4.8% on Friday after Bloomberg reported China plans to approve some imports of Nvidia’s H200 artificial-intelligence chips as soon as this quarter. In the U.S., Alibaba’s American depositary shares (BABA) were down about 2.5% at $150.63 in premarket trading, after a 5.3% rise in the previous session. 1
The chip angle matters because access to high-end graphics processing units, or GPUs, is a hard constraint for Chinese groups building “generative AI” tools — software that can produce text, images or code. Alibaba has tied much of its growth pitch to cloud computing and AI, so traders tend to treat supply shifts as a direct read-through to cloud demand and spending plans.
Nvidia is requiring full upfront payment from Chinese buyers for the H200, with no cancellations or refunds, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters, underscoring the regulatory uncertainty around shipments. Chinese authorities have also told some local companies to pause orders while they decide what mix of domestic chips should come with imported processors, and Nvidia expects shipments to begin before the Lunar New Year in mid-February, the report said. 2
Wall Street is not uniformly bullish. Morgan Stanley analyst Gary Yu cut his price target on Alibaba to $180 from $200 and kept an overweight rating, but warned “core e-comm businesses have started to worsen” because of weak consumption. Yu still called Alibaba “China’s Best AI Enabler” and forecast Alicloud revenue growth of 35% or more year-on-year, while flagging higher AI-related costs as a drag on near-term profitability. 3
A routine Form 6-K filed on Jan. 7 showed Alibaba’s issued ordinary shares rose by about 10.3 million in December, with no change in authorised share capital, as the company published its Hong Kong exchange monthly return on share movements. 4
Regulation is the other moving piece. China this week issued guidelines that ban major platforms including Alibaba from coercing merchants into participating in promotions, in a push to cool intensifying competition in online retail and delivery. The rules are due to take effect in February and land as Alibaba fights rivals JD.com and Meituan for shoppers. 5
Elsewhere, Hong Kong’s IPO calendar is feeding into AI sentiment. MiniMax Group raised $619 million in a Hong Kong flotation, while the Financial Times reported the AI start-up’s shares more than doubled on their first day of trading; Alibaba is among its backers, the FT said. 6
But the chip trade can reverse quickly. If Beijing narrows approvals, stretches timelines, or keeps orders on hold longer than the market expects, the AI optimism could cool — and any renewed push to subsidise merchants would pressure margins in Alibaba’s core commerce business.
