Alibaba Q1 Results Deliver Strong Growth in AI and Quick Commerce
August 29, 2025

Alibaba Group delivered strong results across its core businesses during the June quarter. Alibaba Cloud revenue growth accelerated to 26% with increasing AI-related revenue contribution, while the strategic combination of Alibaba’s China consumer businesses unlocked new growth potential. This solid progress strengthens Alibaba’s confidence to continue investing in its two strategic pillars: consumption and AI + Cloud.


“This quarter, our strategic focus on consumption and AI + Cloud delivered strong growth. Our decisive investment in the quick commerce business achieved key milestones as we won consumer mindshare. We generated substantial synergies from combining resources of our consumer platforms which resulted in new highs in monthly active consumers and daily order volume. Driven by robust AI demand, Cloud Intelligence Group experienced accelerated revenue growth, and AI-related product revenue is now a significant portion of revenue from external customers,” said Eddie Wu, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group.

 

Total revenue increased 2% year-over-year, or excluding divested assets Sun Art and Intime, a robust 10% growth on a like-for-like basis, primarily driven by strong core business performance.

 

 “Looking ahead, we remain committed to investing in our two strategic pillars of consumption and AI + Cloud to capture historic opportunities and drive long-term growth,” Wu continued. 

 

Earlier this year, Alibaba announced significant investment plans: In February, it shared plans to invest RMB380 billion (US$53 billion) in AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years. In late April, it launched Taobao Instant Commerce and later announced an investment of RMB50 billion (US$7 billion). The increased investments yielded robust growth.

 

Cloud Reaped AI-Fueled Accelerated Growth

 

Bolstered by the rapid development of AI applications and increasing adoption of AI products by customers, Alibaba Clouds revenue growth accelerated 26% year-over-year to RMB33.4 billion (US$4,662 million), marking its fastest growth in over three years. AI-related product revenue achieved triple-digit growth for the eighth consecutive quarter.

 

This stellar performance underscores Alibabas strong positioning as a full-stack AI + Cloud company, providing infrastructure, platform tools, foundation models, enterprise-ready applications to global customers across industries, while supporting an open-source ecosystem worldwide.

 

The company remains committed to leading innovation in foundation models. Since July, Alibaba has launched several industry-leading Qwen3 models. Notably, the Qwen3-Coder, its most advanced agentic AI coding model to date, is globally competitive against leading models across key benchmarks in agentic coding, browser interaction, and tool usage. We also launched the latest Wan2.2 series, the industry’s first open-source large video generation model with MOE (Mixture-of-Experts) architecture, which allows creators to make cinema-style videos with one click.

 

Meanwhile, Alibaba is transforming its existing businesses by integrating AI at its core, including the launch of the worlds first AI-native mapping application earlier this month.

 

Comprehensive Consumption Platform Unleashes Synergies

 

To advance the "user first" strategy, Alibaba Group combined Taobao and Tmall Group with Ele.me and Fliggy to form the Alibaba China E-commerce Group, transforming its value proposition into a comprehensive consumption platform to meet all consumer needs.

 

A key highlight was the rapid growth of Taobao Instant Commerce, which strengthened the Taobao app's leadership position in China by effectively increasing shoppers’ engagement with high-frequency on-demand services. The quick commerce service contributed to a 25% year-over-year increase in monthly active consumers on the Taobao app in the first three weeks of August.

 

Building on this momentum, Alibaba rolled out a new cross-platform loyalty program in early August that connects everything from online shopping to daily needs, achieving higher retention via increased user engagement. With the substantial synergies generated, Alibaba China E-commerce Group achieved new records in monthly active consumers and daily order volume.

 

For China e-commerce business, customer management revenue rose 10% year-over-year to RMB89.3 billion (US$12.5 billion), primarily driven by improved take rate which benefitted from the software service fees introduced in September last year and the growing adoption of the AI-powered marketing tool Quanzhantui.

 

The companys highest-spending consumer cohort, 88VIP members, also grew by double digits year-over-year, with membership surpassing 53 million, underscoring the strong association with Chinas most sought-after consumer group.

 

International Commerce Strengthens with Operational Discipline

 

Alibabas International Digital Commerce Group (AIDC) delivered a robust 19% year-over-year revenue growth, led by strong performance from AliExpress and Trendyol.

 

We also executed well against our commitment to improve operating efficiency, as AIDC significantly narrowed its loss to approach breakeven this quarter,” said Toby Xu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group.