Alibaba Group reported strong results across its core businesses in the September quarter, with total revenue grew 15% year-over-year on a like-for-like basis excluding disposed businesses, underscoring steady progress in its investments to capture strategic opportunities in AI + Cloud and consumption.
Alibaba Cloud’s revenue growth accelerated to 34% year-over-year, while Alibaba China E-commerce Group posted 16% revenue growth year-over-year alongside notable improvements in the quick commerce business’s operating efficiency.
“We have entered into an investment phase to build long-term strategic value in AI technologies and infrastructure and a consumption platform integrating daily life services and e-commerce. With our significant strategic investments in these areas, our two core businesses of AI + Cloud and consumption continued to deliver strong growth this quarter,” said Eddie Wu, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group.
Over the past four quarters, the company has deployed approximately RMB120 billion in capital expenditure to advance AI and cloud infrastructure.
AI Momentum Accelerated Growth in Cloud
Alibaba Cloud delivered strong revenue growth, with total revenue increasing 34% year-over-year to RMB 39.8 billion (US$5.6 billion) and revenue from external customers grew 29% year-over-year. AI-related product revenue recorded its ninth consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth, driven by robust demand from external customers seeking high-performance infrastructure and value-added applications.
The business continued strengthening its full-stack AI offerings, with major upgrades in foundational models to advanced AI infrastructure. Its leadership in open-source AI remains undisputed: as of October 31, 2025, more than 180,000 derivative models had been developed using the Qwen family of models on Hugging Face, the world’s largest open-source AI community, which is over twice the number of the second largest player.
Alibaba also recently launched the Qwen App, its most significant consumer-facing AI product to date. Powered by the latest Qwen model, the app extends far beyond conversational inquiries, enabling users to generate research reports, perform AI-assisted coding tasks and more. Within the first week of the public beta launch, the Qwen App has surpassed 10 million downloads, becoming one of the fastest-growing AI applications.
Comprehensive Consumption Platform Yielded Strong Synergies
Alibaba’s focus on building a comprehensive consumption platform continued to deliver strong results. Alibaba China E-commerce Group revenue accelerated to 16% year-over-year, with customer management revenue increasing 10% year-over-year to RMB78.9 billion (US$11billion), primarily driven by an improved take rate.
The quick commerce business generated meaningful synergies with the broader e-commerce business, fueling a rapid year-over-year increase in monthly active consumers on the Taobao app during the quarter. The business has reached critical mass, with substantial improvements in unit economics since September.
Growth among Alibaba’s highest spending and most engaged consumer group, 88VIP members, remained strong, with the membership base surpassing 56 million and continuing to expand at a double-digit year-over-year rate.
Alibaba also concluded another successful 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, delivering solid growth for brands of all sizes. Tmall recorded its strongest 11.11 growth in GMV net of refunds in four years.
New Milestones Achieved in AIDC and Amap
AIDC’s revenue grew 10% year-over-year to RMB34.8 billion (US$4.9 billion). The business unit reported an adjusted EBITA profit of RMB162 million (US$23 million) for the quarter thanks to logistics optimization and investment efficiency enhancement.
Amap set a record of new peak in daily active users surpassing 360 million on October 1 during China’s National Day holiday. The record performance followed its recent launch of an AI-powered ranking, “Amap Street Stars” in September.
