Results show customers sticking with e-commerce giant over cut-price competitors
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Image: Shutterstock via Dennis
The international arm of e-commerce group Alibaba, which includes AliExpress, saw revenue rise 20% to $4 billion in the second quarter. The division posted just under a profit, but saw its earnings decimate.
In recent months, the group focused on attracting more sellers and a more diverse offering to make it attractive for shoppers not to go to Temu for once, but to dust off AliExpress again.
An official statement read: “We believe that our diversity of businesses, our extensive product range and our technological strengths in different regions’ll provide long-term competitive advantages, given the fast-changing global e-commerce environment.”
In terms of technology, the group is currently investing heavily in AI tools for sellers. In an earlier phase, most of the focus was on making the logistics process more efficient. In other words, the Chinese want a parcel to be on the doormat within five days of ordering. To that end, it established the Choice programme, which is now “moving forward meaningfully”.
The international e-commerce business grew 26% to $4.7 billion in the second quarter.
Alibaba recently launched Qwen3-Coder, an open source AI model specifically for software development, presented as its most advanced coding tool to date.
The model is designed for complex tasks such as code generation and handling extensive workflows. Alibaba highlighted the power of Qwen3-Coder in so-called agentic AI coding tasks, where AI can tackle programming challenges independently.
According to Alibaba’s performance data, Qwen3-Coder outperforms domestic competitors such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI’s K2 on essential coding skills. Moreover, Alibaba claims the model is comparable to leading US models, such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-4, in certain areas.
Emerce