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Chinese tech shares have been bumpy of late. Investors have grown wary of sky-high AI research and development costs and slowing consumer spending in China. In this environment, Alibaba (BABA) has been walking a tightrope. Its core e‑commerce business is grappling with intense competition and soft demand, even as the company plows money into cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI).
Meanwhile, this month, Alibaba unveiled Qwen 3.6-Plus, a new “agentic” AI model designed to let software act on its own. Think of it as an AI assistant that acts, not just answers. The rollout highlights Alibaba’s strategy to be a major player in AI, but in the near term, it’s mostly a long-term growth story for the company.