The Alibaba stand on the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Center in Shanghai, China, on July 5, 2024.
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Alibaba‘s workforce shrank by roughly 34% over the course of 2025, as the corporate offloaded a few of its offline retail companies whereas doubling down on synthetic intelligence.
The Chinese e-commerce and know-how giant ended December with 128,197 workers, down from 194,320 a 12 months earlier.
The disclosure of its newest headcount got here in an earnings report launched Thursday that confirmed the agency’s revenue plunging 67% and its income lacking expectations for the final three months of final 12 months.
The firm’s shares in Hong Kong had been buying and selling down 6% Friday.
The bulk of Alibaba’s workforce discount was revealed in its March 2025 quarter following the sale of Sun Art retail group on the finish of 2024. The tech giant additionally exited its stake in division retailer chain Intime across the identical interval.
China’s second-largest tech firm by market cap is amongst a raft of different main tech corporations which have lowered headcounts in the previous 12 months from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou, China.
Alibaba’s workers has supported its sprawling community of enterprise items spanning e-commerce, cloud, logistics, and different associated companies.
However, Alibaba has been steadily decreasing headcount in current years, although the newest cuts had been a lot bigger than the 11% discount in December 2024 from the prior 12 months.
This comes as Alibaba has sought to dump labor-intensive holdings and restructure its core companies, with a serious focus on synthetic intelligence.
The tech giant goals to turn into a full-stack AI firm spanning semiconductor manufacturing to computing and AI fashions.
The firm this week launched an agentic AI service recognized as Wukong for companies, and hiked costs for its cloud and storage companies by as a lot as 34% resulting from rising demand and provide chain prices.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu mentioned throughout an earnings name Thursday that the corporate aimed to develop its cloud and AI income to over $100 billion yearly over the following 5 years.
