Alibaba Stock Cools Off Into Year-End, But Its AI Engine Is Giving Bulls No Reason To Bail

• Alibaba is seeing significant retail activity owing to a steady stream of AI-related news and developments. 
• The company’s Qwen AI model is at the center of the buzz, with recent reports suggesting that more U.S. companies, including Meta, are using it.
• BABA stock has retreated after hitting a record in October.

Alibaba shares may have retreated from their October record high, but a steady flow of artificial intelligence–related developments continues to keep investors focused on the Chinese tech giant.

U.S.-listed shares of the company trended on Stocktwits early Monday amid speculation that Meta was using its Qwen AI model and that Alibaba was weighing a large-scale purchase of AI accelerators to bolster cloud infrastructure.

The reported developments cap a notably active year for the e-commerce and cloud giant, highlighted by a rapid expansion of AI offerings, strengthening cloud momentum, and solid stock gains. That came amid what many see as a resurgence of the Chinese AI and AI-linked industries, backed by aggressive investment, product development, and investor confidence. 

2025 Stock Performance

In the first nine months of the year, BABA rose a whopping 114%; in Q4, the stock has been dull, losing 15% (with just three trading days left for the year). 

Consequently, the retail sentiment on Stocktwits has largely moved between ‘neutral’ and ‘bearish’ zones in the last three months of the year. That said, BABA has one of the largest retail followings on the platform (424,770), which increased by 3.6% this year.

Qwen Shining

Alibaba’s Qwen has recently made headlines, with reports also suggesting its adoption is accelerating to a level that is raising concerns for Western AI companies that have long dominated the space. 

Tech magazine Wired reported on Saturday that U.S. companies were increasingly adopting Qwen models to reduce costs, with the report’s author suggesting that 2026 could be the year Alibaba scales even higher. 

Downloads of Chinese AI models on HuggingFace, a code-sharing platform, surpassed those of U.S. models in July, with Airbnb, Perplexity, and Nvidia all using Qwen. Bloomberg reported last week that Meta is using Qwen, alongside Google’s Gemma, OpenAI’s gpt-oss, to train its yet-to-be-announced AI model code-named Avocado.

Separately, Alibaba is reportedly in talks to purchase 40,000 to 50,000 AMD MI308 AI chips (a China-specific variant) to bolster its cloud infrastructure amid U.S. export restrictions on high-end Nvidia GPUs. The news report sent AMD shares higher last month.

Analysts’ View

Recent underperformance in BABA may present a buying opportunity, according to analyst recommendations. Thirty-eight of the 43 analysts covering the stock have a ‘Buy’ or higher rating, with four rating ‘Hold’ and one recommending ‘Strong Sell,’ according to Koyfin. Their average price target of nearly $200 implies a 31% upside to the stock’s last closing price.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

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