On August 17, Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) agreed to hand its entire stake in game studio Lingxi Games to private equity firm Trustar Capital, a deal a person familiar with the matter says will net the Chinese tech giant more than $2 billion. Bloomberg News pegged the transaction closer to $1.5 billion, and neither side disclosed a final price or closing date. What the sale does make plain is where Alibaba wants its capital and attention pointed next, and it isn’t games.
Bull Case: Cloud Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
Lingxi is the latest non-core asset Alibaba has shed, following its recent sales of hypermarket chain Sun Art and department store operator Intime. Under the agreement, Lingxi’s management team, including CEO Zhou Bingshu, stays in place under Trustar, which means Alibaba is walking away cleanly rather than restructuring the unit itself. That pattern fits a company redirecting resources toward AI and cloud computing rather than propping up businesses outside its core.
The bet centers on Qwen, Alibaba’s open-source family of large language models. Offering the models at no cost acts as an onboarding pipeline, as developers utilizing Qwen require computing infrastructure, hosting, and storage services supplied by Alibaba Cloud. The Qwen app has already topped 100 million monthly active users. Cloud revenue grew 34% in the latest fiscal year, with AI-related product revenue posting triple-digit growth for eleven straight quarters, and the segment grew 38% year over year to $6 billion in a recent quarter, making Alibaba the leading cloud provider in the Asia Pacific region. Shares rose 27.4% in July alone as Chinese AI models regained favor with investors, and buybacks have trimmed shares outstanding by 8.5% over the past three years.
Bear Case: Retail Still Weighs It Down
The Lingxi sale also reflects a business Alibaba would rather de-emphasize. The e-commerce division continues to encounter strong competition from Pinduoduo, JD.com, and Douyin, while high expenditures in quick commerce impact the unit’s long-term profitability outlook. Consolidated revenue grew just 3% year-over-year in a recent quarter as Alibaba’s other revenue segment declined sharply, and adjusted earnings were nearly wiped out entirely in the first three months of the year as spending on technology and quick commerce piled up.
There’s a regulatory undertone too. Lingxi itself had explored external fundraising in late 2023 before that process stalled when China proposed tighter rules for online gaming, one of the sources familiar with the Trustar deal said. The gaming sector has since rebounded, but the episode is a reminder that Chinese policy can still reshape a business overnight, a risk that extends well beyond gaming for foreign holders of Alibaba stock.
What The Numbers Suggest
Hedge fund ownership of Alibaba fell to 102 funds last quarter from 115 the quarter before, a pullback in institutional conviction even as the shares rallied. Short interest sits low, at 1.78% of float, suggesting little organized betting against the stock. As of August 18, Alibaba trades at 17.01 times forward earnings, a multiple that leaves room to re-rate if the AI and cloud growth keeps compounding, though the drop in fund ownership complicates any simple read of that gap.
Where This Leaves Alibaba
The Lingxi sale is a small transaction dressed up as a signal: Alibaba wants out of anything that isn’t AI, cloud, or its core commerce engine. For the bulls, that focus is exactly what could let Alibaba Cloud’s flywheel of Qwen adoption and rising compute demand carry the stock’s next leg. For the bears, a still-sluggish retail business and a regulatory backdrop that can shift without warning mean the story is far from settled.
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