Alibaba Merges Global and Domestic eCommerce Businesses

Chinese conglomerate Alibaba is combining its domestic and international eCommerce businesses into one unit.

According to a Thursday (Nov. 21) securities filing, the new Alibaba E-commerce Business Group melds together the company’s Taobao and Tmall Group and the Alibaba International Digital Commerce (AIDC) Group.

Fan Jiang, CEO of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, will become chief executive of the new business.

A report by Reuters notes that Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu announced the change in a message to employees posted on the company intranet.

“The e-commerce industry in China and around the world is entering a new era, and the global supply chain capabilities, fulfillment capabilities and consumer service capabilities will determine the future competitive landscape,” Wu wrote in the post, seen by Reuters.

The move comes 20 months after Alibaba’s landmark decision to divide into six separate units, the largest change in its 25-year history.

The company’s eCommerce platforms have been facing increased competition from rivals such as Pinduoduo and its international cousin Temu, as well as ByteDance’s Douyin and TikTok.

Last week, Alibaba released quarterly earnings that showed its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings were fueling growth in both its retail and its cloud businesses.

“This quarter, our core business segments maintained steady growth guided by our user-first, AI-driven strategy,” Wu said on the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Taobao and Tmall both witnessed a steady uptick in merchant adoption of the company’s AI-powered marketing tool, Quanzhantui. Alibaba expects sellers to boost their marketing spending on its platform as they see this tool bolster their marketing efficiency.

Meanwhile, the company recorded accelerated year-over-year revenue growth for its Cloud Intelligence Group during the quarter. Alibaba also saw double-digit growth in its public cloud products, fueled in part by rising adoption of AI-related products and triple-digit growth in its AI-related products.

The company also recently released its AI-powered search engine for global B2B sourcing, which finds wholesale products based on businesses’ text or image prompts.

“This new product reimagines international procurement through conversational search, making global sourcing easier for [small- to medium-sized businesses] while improving overall platform transaction efficiency,” Jiang said during the call.

A recent report by the Financial Times identified Alibaba as part of a group of Chinese tech giants that have begun recruiting from Silicon Valley companies to bolster their AI projects.