BABA Stock Gains Ground: Alibaba Reportedly Sells Gaming Unit For $1.5B As Qwen Fuels Bigger AI Push

• Alibaba is reportedly selling Lingxi Games to Trustar Capital.
• The company’s CEO, Eddie Wu, is shifting focus toward AI and cloud computing. 
• Alibaba’s Qwen AI models have topped 3 billion downloads, far ahead of Google and Meta.

Alibaba (BABA) stock gained overnight as investors weighed the company’s decision to sell Lingxi Games to Trustar Capital for more than $1.5 billion. The divestment reinforces Alibaba’s push to streamline operations and redirect resources toward artificial intelligence and cloud computing, while Qwen’s growing global adoption adds momentum to its broader AI strategy. 

Alibaba Reshapes Its Portfolio As AI Becomes The Priority 

According to a Bloomberg report, Alibaba is moving further away from non-core businesses as it concentrates resources on AI and cloud computing. The Chinese technology giant has agreed to sell its Lingxi Games unit to private equity firm Trustar Capital in a transaction expected to be worth at least $1.5 billion.

The divestment forms part of a wider overhaul led by CEO Eddie Wu. Alibaba has been trimming businesses outside its core ambitions while focusing more on AI infrastructure, software and cloud services. The company has set an ambitious goal of generating $100 billion in AI-related revenue within five years.

Alibaba stock traded up more than 1% overnight, heading into Monday. 

BABA’s Qwen Gains Global Momentum

Lingxi is known for Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition, a multiplayer strategy game developed with Japan’s Koei Tecmo Holdings Co. Selling it gives Alibaba another opportunity to redirect capital and attention toward its expanding technology push.

Alibaba’s AI effort is increasingly centered on its Qwen model family. According to another Bloomberg report, Qwen models have surpassed 3 billion downloads worldwide over the past six months, while its open-source ecosystem now includes more than 460 models and over 300,000 derivatives. In comparison, Google had 418 million downloads, while Meta had 227 million. 

This progress places Alibaba alongside Chinese rivals such as DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax as developers seek alternatives to closed systems from U.S. companies. Meta and Nvidia (NVDA) have also introduced new open AI models, underscoring the battle for developer adoption.

Alibaba has been ramping up its transformation from an e-commerce heavyweight into one of the world's largest AI infrastructure players, committing billions of dollars to cloud computing, semiconductor development and AI model deployment as it seeks a larger role in the next phase of the technology race.   

Eddie Wu had said strong demand for data centers and chips could push the company beyond its three-year RMB380 billion ($56 billion) investment target. 

BABA Stock: Retail View 

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the stock remained in ‘neutral’ territory. 

A user said, “Almost half the world uses Alibaba's AI. Many more use DeepSeek & other Chinese AI models.  

The US AI bubble beginning to turn into an internet joke. Majority of stock investors do not know what they own.”

BABA stock has declined 15% year-to-date. 

Also See: Dan Niles Says AI Infrastructure Rally Has ‘At Least A Year’ To Run — Names Intel His Favorite Chip Bet

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