Baba

Alibaba Group Holding Limited, or Alibaba, is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology.

Founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via Chinese and global marketplaces, as well as local consumer, digital media and entertainment, logistics and cloud computing services.

It owns and operates a diverse portfolio of companies around the world in numerous business sectors.

On 28 June 1999, Jack Ma, with 17 friends and students founded Alibaba.com, a China-based B2B marketplace site, in his Hangzhou apartment.

In October 1999, Alibaba received a US$25 million investment from Swedish Wallenberg family's Investor AB, Goldman Sachs and SoftBank.

In 1999, Wallenbergs Investor AB owned 6% of the shares.

Alibaba.com was expected to improve the domestic e-commerce market and perfect an e-commerce platform for Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to help export Chinese products to the global market as well as to address World Trade Organization (WTO) challenges.

It is one of the top 10 most valuable corporations, and is named the 31st-largest public company in the world on the Forbes Global 2000 2020 list.

In 2002, Alibaba.com became profitable three years after launch.

Ma wanted to improve the global e-commerce system, so from 2003 onward, Alibaba launched Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Alimama.com, and Lynx.

When eBay announced its expansion into China in 2003, Ma viewed the American company as a foreign competitor and rejected eBay's buyout of Alibaba's subsidiary Taobao.

By applying existing technologies, gaining trust in the Chinese e-commerce market, and expanding through dominating the market at a loss before making a return on additional services, Alibaba's subsidiaries outperformed eBay in the Chinese e-commerce market, claiming a growing percentage of consumers from eBay.

Alibaba subsidiary Taobao would later force eBay out of the Chinese market, with eBay closing its unprofitable China Web unit, though the two companies would break even six years later.

In 2005, Yahoo! invested in Alibaba through a variable interest entity (VIE) structure, buying a 40% stake in the company for US$1 billion.

This would as a result net in US$10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone to Yahoo!.

In 2012, China Investment Corporation led a group of Chinese investors in buying out Yahoo!'s 40% stake and in buying the Alibaba shares that had traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

According to Li Chuan, a senior executive at Alibaba, the company was planning in 2013 to open traditional brick and mortar retail outlets in partnership with Wanda Group, a Chinese real estate company.

On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange raised US$25 billion, giving the company a market value of US$231 billion and, by far, then the largest IPO in world history.

Additionally, Alibaba purchased a 25% stake in Hong Kong-listed Chinese department store chain Intime Retail in early 2014.

Alibaba's stake—28% from 2014's US$692 million investment—would rise to about 74% after the deal.

In April 2014, Alibaba invested in Lyft, along with Coatue Management, and Andreessen Horowitz; they led a US$250 million Series D financing round.

On 5 June 2014, Alibaba bought a 50% stake of Guangzhou Evergrande F.C. from Evergrande Real Estate Group Ltd. in a deal that was worth 1.2 billion yuan (US$192 million).

On 5 September 2014, the group—in a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—set a US$60- to $66- per-share price range for its scheduled initial public offering (IPO), the final price of which would be determined after an international roadshow to gauge the investor interest in Alibaba shares to shareholders.

On 18 September 2014, Alibaba's IPO priced at US$68, raising US$21.8 billion for the company and investors.

Alibaba was the biggest US IPO in history, bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined.

On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's shares (BABA) began trading on the NYSE at an opening price of $92.70 at 11:55 am EST. On 22 September 2014, Alibaba's underwriters announced their confirmation that they had exercised a greenshoe option to sell 15% more shares than originally planned, boosting the total amount of the IPO to $25 billion.

Alibaba and the underwriters of its IPO were sued in a California superior court in a consolidated class action lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in October 2015 on behalf of investors who purchased Alibaba's American depositary shares alleging violations of the Securities Act.

In early 2017, Alibaba and Intime's founder Shen Guojun agreed to pay as much as HK$19.8 billion (US$2.6 billion) to take the store chain private.

In January 2018, Alibaba became the second Asian company to break the US$500 billion valuation mark, after its competitor Tencent.

, Alibaba has the ninth-highest global brand valuation.

Alibaba is one of the world's largest retailers and e-commerce companies.

It also set the record on the 2018 edition of China's Singles' Day, the world's biggest online and offline shopping day.

The company's name came from the character Ali Baba from the Middle Eastern folk-tale collection One Thousand and One Nights because of its universal appeal.

As Jack Ma, one of the founders, replied to Lorraine Hahn on TalkAsia:"One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said do you know about Alibaba? And she said yes. I said what do you know about Alibaba, and she said 'Open Sesame.' And I said yes, this is the name! Then I went onto the street and found 30 people and asked them, 'Do you know Alibaba'? People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China... They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba -- open sesame. Alibaba -- 40 thieves. Alibaba is not a thief. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So...easy to spell, and global know. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name AliMama, in case someone wants to marry us!"

Alibaba reached a settlement agreement in December 2018, subject to court approval, in which it agreed to pay $75 million to settle the lawsuit.

In 2020, it was also rated as the fifth-largest artificial intelligence company.

It is also one of the biggest venture capital firms and investment corporations in the world, as well as the second largest financial services group behind Visa via its fintech arm Ant Group.

The company hosts the largest B2B (Alibaba.com), C2C (Taobao), and B2C (Tmall) marketplaces in the world.

It has been expanding into the media industry, with revenues rising by triple percentage points year after year.