Alibaba shareholders handed management a pair of far-reaching capital mandates at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, even as the Chinese technology group presses ahead with an aggressive international cloud build-out and confronts a securities class action on US soil.
The shareholder vote authorizes the board to issue or resell up to 10% of Alibaba’s issued ordinary shares, and grants matching leeway to repurchase as much as 10% of the stock. Three directors were elected to the board during the same session, and the existing auditors’ mandates were renewed. The buyback authorization gives the company a ready tool to support its share price should market conditions demand it.
That flexibility may prove useful. Alibaba’s shares have shed 24% since the start of the year, closing Friday at EUR 96.20.
ZTO Stake Sale Frees Up Cash
Alongside the meeting, Alibaba moved to monetize part of its logistics holdings. Controlled subsidiaries Alibaba ZT Investment Limited and New Retail Strategic Opportunities Investments 2 Limited disposed of substantial positions in ZTO Express on September 21, offloading 23,391,178 and 1,608,822 Class A shares respectively in the form of American Depositary Shares. The ADSs changed hands at USD 20.02 apiece. The transaction reflects a deliberate push to convert stakes in affiliated companies into cash and sharpen the group’s focus on its core operations and growth initiatives.
Cloud Unit Targets Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands
On the operational front, Alibaba is steering its cloud division deeper into European and Near Eastern markets. Speaking at the company’s Apsara conference, executives said new data center regions will come online in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands within the next twelve months, with the Dutch site scheduled to launch as early as October 2026. Existing capacity in Germany, Malaysia and France is also being expanded, lifting Alibaba Cloud’s global footprint to 107 availability zones across 31 regions.
The infrastructure push comes wrapped in fresh software offerings aimed at agent-based applications. CTO Feifei Li unveiled Smart Studio, a platform the company says delivers substantially higher throughput than standard open-source alternatives. Developers also gain access to Smart Fusion, an API that Alibaba claims cuts token costs by roughly half when multiple models are used together. The goal is to pull more large international clients into the company’s ecosystem; industrial partners in Asia already deploy the models for automated documentation and e-commerce analytics.
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Spending Surge Weighs on Near-Term Results
Underpinning the expansion is a hefty investment program: at least RMB 380 billion earmarked for cloud and AI infrastructure over three years, with a target of more than 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032. The spending is already visible in the numbers. Revenue in the AI cloud and computing power segment climbed 45% year on year to RMB 48.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, yet capital expenditure jumped 75% to RMB 67.7 billion over the same period.
That tension between future-facing investment and immediate margin pressure has kept investors cautious. Even so, several analysts remain constructive on the strategy. Citi’s Alicia Yap reaffirmed her buy rating with a USD 190 price target, anticipating further increases in capital spending in the years ahead. Andy Yu of DBS stayed equally bullish, maintaining a buy recommendation and a USD 207 target.
Whether the outlay on data centers and new processors ultimately pays off now hinges on how quickly Alibaba can monetize those overseas capacities. Management is betting that demand for computing power will continue to outstrip supply beyond the current year.
US Class Action Adds a Legal Overhang
Not everything is running smoothly. Alibaba’s US-listed shares fell as much as 4.2% intraday Wednesday after law firms publicized an ongoing securities class action, according to media reports. The deadline to name a lead plaintiff in the case falls on October 5. The suit accuses the company of misleading investors about its ties to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and of failing to disclose the risk that it could be designated a “Chinese military company.”
For shareholders, navigating those American legal risks — alongside the reshaping of the group’s investment portfolio — remains a decisive factor shaping the outlook.
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