AsianFin -- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s stock surged the most in weeks after the company unveiled a new AI model that it claims matches the performance of DeepSeek while using only a fraction of the data.
The Chinese e-commerce giant, which emerged as a leader in the domestic AI sector in 2025 with its highly benchmarked models, open-sourced its QwQ-32B model on Thursday. This new platform represents a significant leap forward, achieving comparable performance to DeepSeek’s R1 model with just 5% of the parameters, or data units.
Alibaba’s shares jumped as much as 7.6% in Hong Kong, marking the biggest intraday gain in nearly two weeks and helping lift a key index of Chinese tech stocks by almost 5%. The company has seen a remarkable rally this year, adding approximately $135 billion to its market value. Investors have grown increasingly optimistic about Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma, as it stabilizes its business following a years-long government crackdown. The company’s growing expertise in AI, coupled with signs of Beijing’s support, has fueled its resurgence.
“Alibaba has several positive drivers, with their open-source reasoning model being the latest catalyst,” said Vey-Sern Ling, a managing director at Union Bancaire Privee. “Their core business is improving and will clearly benefit from China’s push to boost consumption. Investors are also recognizing the value that AI will bring to their cloud computing business.”
The release of the QwQ-32B model underscores Alibaba’s commitment to advancing AI technology while optimizing resource efficiency. As the company continues to innovate, its stock performance reflects growing confidence in its ability to leverage AI for long-term growth and competitiveness.
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