(Bloomberg) — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s stock gained the most in about two weeks after the company initiated a series of moves intended to shore up its place in China’s AI development boom.

The e-commerce leader’s shares climbed more than 7% in early Hong Kong trading, tracking an overnight gain in the US. That takes the Chinese company’s gain to over 80% this year, a rally driven by aggressive moves to expand into the fledgling field of artificial intelligence.

Alibaba this week raised $3.2 billion in convertible bonds to bankroll the country’s biggest AI infrastructure budget and cloud service. It unveiled updates to flagship Qwen-series models designed to compete with DeepSeek and OpenAI. And The Information reported that Alibaba and Baidu Inc. are starting to employ in-house chips in the training of artificial intelligence, replacing costly Nvidia Corp. accelerators. Baidu’s stock rose close to 13% in Hong Kong to its highest since October 2024.

Alibaba is staging a comeback after years of regulatory scrutiny hammered its internet business. The firm co-founded by Jack Ma has established itself this year among the frontrunners of a nationwide AI frenzy. It’s since declared itself wholly in pursuit of artificial general intelligence — the holy grail for many tech companies.

Its recent moves coincide with growing optimism about the outlook for a technology expected to revolutionize industry and economies. This week, Oracle Corp. helped ignite a sectoral rally after delivering a blowout outlook for global AI spending.

“Alibaba’s recent moves have shifted investors’ focus completely to its AI potential, offsetting the concerns about its price wars in food delivery,” said Paul Pong, a managing director at Pegasus Fund Managers. “With the capability of producing its own chips, it should create more growth drivers.”

The stock gains come even as Alibaba wages war with deep-pocketed rivals on another front. 

This week, the company declared it was sinking more money into incentives and subsidies to power its local services and e-commerce business. It’s committing another 1 billion yuan ($140 million) of incentives to drive more traffic to one of its most popular online services, cranking up the heat on JD.com Inc. and Meituan in their ongoing battle for Chinese consumers.

Some analysts regard that as a positive given it’s competing hard for users to drive its core business. But others point to margin erosion at a time AI’s monetization potential remains elusive.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

Alibaba’s latest AI model releases, including the more efficient Qwen3-Next and 1-trillion-parameter Qwen-3-Max-Preview, should support demand for its cloud services. However, returns from the segment are set to remain poor, given low margins and disproportionately high capital costs. Quarterly adjusted Ebita in the cloud intelligence division rose by just $86 million in the 12 months ended June 2025. Tencent remains better placed to generate a near-term return on AI, in our opinion.

– Robert Lea and Jasmine Lyu, analysts

Click here for the research.

(Updates with Baidu’s stock from the third paragraph.)

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The company’s changes also include improvements to inventory strategy, product innovation and connection with core customers, as well as a recapitalization plan that was announced in August, Rent the Runway Co-Founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman said Thursday (Sept. 11) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

“Significant business transformations typically take place over a long time horizon,” Hyman said. “However, over the last several months, we’ve made swift progress and delivered results quickly.”

Recent product launches that enable personalized recommendations include features based on each customer’s favorite designers, styles and occasions, according to a presentation released Thursday.

Launched in August, these features personalize the customer’s browsing experience with “relevant recommendations based on her preferences and interests to make picking easy,” the presentation said.

The company also plans to leverage AI to surface insights from members’ reviews, making it easier for customers to find the right style and fit, per the presentation.

“Looking forward, product improvements will focus on incorporating more personalized recommendations […] and using AI for review summaries and fit improvements to build a continuously improved product for our customers,” Hyman said during the call.

Hyman also highlighted other components of Rent the Runway’s transformation, including a “historic investment in inventory” that has added 2,200 new styles and 56 new brands to the platform so far this year, giving customers more items to browse and rent; the launch of affiliate emails that enable customers to purchase from brands via links in Rent the Runway’s emails; new social media campaigns that facilitate the company “meeting our customers where they are on Instagram, TikTok and Reddit”; and exclusive, in-person events for subscribers that drew demand that was three times greater than capacity.

During the quarter ended July 31, Rent the Runway saw year-over-year increases of 2.5% in revenue, 13.4% in active subscribers, 5.7% in total subscribers, and 77% in average subscription net promoter score, according to a Thursday earnings release.

Hyman also spotlighted the recapitalization plan that Rent the Runway announced Aug. 21, saying it will strengthen the company’s balance sheet and supply it with fresh capital.

“Since COVID, I believe that our capital structure has been the thing holding us back from making a full comeback, and we’re happy to be moving forward into a new chapter,” Hyman said during the call. “We’re ready to be reacquainted with the investor community and I view this as our IPO 2.0.”

Artificial intelligence giant OpenAI on Thursday announced its nonprofit parent will retain control of the company while also gaining an equity stake worth more than $100 billion.

The move will allow OpenAI to raise new capital while also making its nonprofit parent company “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world,” according to Bret Taylor, chairman of OpenAI’s board.

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“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s [public benefit corporation] grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact,” Taylor said in a statement.

OpenAI and Microsoft also said in a joint statement on Thursday that they signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) to shape their next phase of partnership and are actively working to finalize a definitive deal. The companies said they are focused on building “the best” artificial intelligence tools that are also safe.

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“OpenAI and Microsoft have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the next phase of our partnership,” the two companies said in a joint statement Thursday afternoon. “We are actively working to finalize contractual terms in a definitive agreement. Together, we remain focused on delivering the best AI tools for everyone, grounded in our shared commitment to safety.”

The Microsoft headquarters campus in Redmond, Washington. (iStock / iStock)

Microsoft has reportedly invested around $13 billion in the ChatGPT creator since 2019.

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In May, OpenAI announced it was scuttling its plan to move the company away from a nonprofit structure to becoming a for-profit company. The ChatGPT-maker created a for-profit limited liability company (LLC), which it converted into a public benefit corporation that considers the interests of shareholders as well as OpenAI’s mission. The tech giant announced at the time that OpenAI’s nonprofit would have operational control over the public benefit corporation and would be a large shareholder in it.

Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, speaks during a panel discussion titled “The Age of AI” at the Technical University of Berlin on February 07, 2025, in Berlin, Germany. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images / Getty Images)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who prompted the company’s exploration of moving to a for-profit structure to make it easier for the company to raise the large amounts of money for investments he thinks will be needed to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), sent a letter to employees at the time explaining the decision and what it means for the company.

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“OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit, is today a nonprofit that oversees and controls the for-profit, and going forward will remain a nonprofit that oversees and controls the for-profit. That will not change,” Altman wrote in May.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.