HONG KONG, May 4, 2026, 06:01 HKT
• Alibaba’s international commerce division says over 230,000 businesses around the globe now use its Accio Work AI tool.
• Alibaba’s next hurdle arrives May 13, with March-quarter and fiscal 2026 earnings on deck.
• Investors want to see if gains from AI and cloud are enough to counter shrinking margins in e-commerce and quick commerce.
As Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. gears up for its May 13 results, investors are eyeing a new question: can the company’s rapidly expanding AI offerings offset the hefty costs of moving beyond its sluggish core e-commerce operation?
Last week, Alibaba International reported that Accio Work—its AI agent built for small businesses and solo founders—had already been picked up by over 230,000 companies globally just a month after launch. Accio Work now enables Alibaba.com sellers to handle store management using natural language, from monitoring store performance to updating listings.
This comes into focus as Alibaba prepares to report next week—covering both the quarter and fiscal year through March 31. Investors lately have shown less tolerance for high spending on AI, cloud, and delivery. The company said its board will review results May 12, with the release set for May 13 ahead of the U.S. market open.
Accio Work falls under Alibaba’s broader move into “agentic AI,” tools that actually execute and organize tasks instead of just responding to prompts. Alibaba International Vice President Kuo Zhang told Reuters the goal is to create a “specialized B2B tool rather than a generalist platform,” emphasizing that handling financial transactions, making payments, or accessing private files all requires explicit user consent. Reuters
Alibaba’s U.S.-listed shares wrapped up Friday at $131.50, slipping 0.31% versus the session before, market data show. The market setup remains murky. On Sunday, MarketBeat listed 23 analysts on the name, averaging a “Moderate Buy” and setting a $188.75 target for the next year. Still, the stock sits well off its $192.67 one-year high, according to the same data. MarketBeat
Alibaba’s most recent quarter captured the strain. Revenue was up just 1.7%, per Reuters in March, but net income tumbled 66.3%—falling short of analyst expectations—as money plowed into speedy delivery and heavy promotions didn’t spark enough demand. On the other hand, cloud sales jumped 36%, boosted by appetite for AI.
Chief Executive Eddie Wu isn’t mincing words. “Over the next five years, our goal is to surpass $100 billion in combined cloud and AI external revenue,” Wu told analysts after the last earnings report, per Reuters. That’s a hefty target, and it lands squarely on products like Accio Work, Qwen, and the company’s cloud services to prove they can convert user momentum into real, paying customers. Reuters
Rivals are on the move, too. Last week, Reuters said Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent were already chasing fresh orders for Huawei AI chips—demand that kicked up after DeepSeek’s V4 model debuted and put a spotlight on local AI hardware. According to the same report, Alibaba Cloud’s Bailian platform rolled out DeepSeek V4 the day it launched, underscoring how cloud players are hustling to roll out the newest models for developers.
There’s a risk here—strong adoption might not translate into steady profits. Jamie Chen at Third Bridge told Reuters Alibaba’s Qwen chatbot saw daily active users spike to about 50 million during a big promotion. Usage dropped off afterward. “Thirty-day retention remains relatively low,” Chen said, noting that most users are sticking to entertainment and consumer-focused features. Reuters
Commerce is feeling the heat, too. Alibaba and JD.com have poured cash into discounts and speeding up deliveries, squeezing margins as both chase quick commerce share. Meituan isn’t backing down either, holding strong in food delivery and local services. Alibaba says it’s aiming to shore up unit economics for Taobao Quick Commerce and has set its sights on 1 trillion yuan in gross merchandise volume, aiming for profitability by fiscal 2029.
Alibaba isn’t just rolling out new AI tools—it needs to show those products actually deliver. The focus shifts to May 13, when the call should reveal if backers are ready to keep funding expansion, or if they’re pushing harder for profits sooner.
