Alibaba revenue grew in its fiscal Q2 as the online marketplace operator has increasingly added artificial intelligence (AI) tools to its ecommerce suite.
For the first half of its fiscal year, Alibaba reported about 495.45 billion Chinese yuan in revenue (about $69.6 billion). That’s up 3% year over year.
Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, said in a statement that the company has been in an investment phase “to build long-term strategic value in AI technologies and infrastructure.” It’s also investing in “a consumption platform integrating daily life services and ecommerce.”
Alibaba owns the world’s two largest online marketplaces by gross merchandise value (GMV), Taobao and Tmall. Taobao ranks No. 1 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest such marketplaces by GMV. Tmall ranks No. 2. Both platforms operate in China and primarily serve the Chinese market. Among Alibaba’s other marketplaces is the global B2B marketplace Alibaba.com.
Alibaba revenue in Q2
In its fiscal quarter that ended Sept. 30, Alibaba reported a 5% year-over-year increase in revenue, to about 247.8 Chinese yuan (about $34.8 billion).
Wu said Alibaba’s AI and cloud technologies have “continued to deliver strong growth” in Q2.
Demand for AI also further accelerated its Cloud Intelligence Group business, he said, growing revenue 34%. At the same time, AI-related product revenue achieved triple-digit year-over-year growth for the ninth consecutive quarter, he said.
“In our consumption business, quick commerce continued to scale with significant improvement in unit economics and drove rapid growth in monthly active consumers on the Taobao app,” Wu said in a statement.
Over the past four quarters, Alibaba Group has invested about 120 billion Chinese yuan toward AI and Cloud infrastructure, according to Toby Xu, chief financial officer of Alibaba Group.
Xu said in the statement that AI revenue contributed “to an expanding share of our cloud revenues from external customers, and customer management revenue up 10%.”
Alibaba’s Chinese ecommerce unit said its “quick commerce business has substantially improved its unit economics since September, driven by higher fulfillment logistics efficiency, strong customer retention and increasing average order value.”
Meanwhile, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group (AIDCG) reported 10% year-over-year revenue growth, to about 34.8 billion yuan (roughly $4.89 billion).
It said the unit “continued to diversify and enrich product offerings” in the quarter. To do so, it onboarded local merchants and partners while leveraging the Alibaba ecosystem’s supply chain. AIDCG noted that AliExpress developed a model it calls AliExpressDirect that leverages local inventories in more than 30 countries.
Check back in for more earnings updates. Here’s last quarter’s update about Alibaba revenue and earnings.
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