Alibaba sees record revenue of $38.4b

Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported on Thursday night that its revenue stood at 280.15 billion yuan ($38.4 billion) during the October-December period, an increase of 8 percent year-on-year, while its net income reached 46.43 billion yuan, surging 333 percent year-on-year.

For the quarter ending on Dec 31, revenue from its cloud business rose 13 percent year-on-year to 31.7 billion yuan, with artificial intelligence-related product revenue achieving triple-digit growth for the sixth consecutive quarter.

The company said it will continue to invest in technological innovation, particularly in AI infrastructure, to increase cloud adoption for AI. "This quarter's results demonstrated substantial progress in our 'user first, AI-driven' strategies and the reaccelerated growth of our core businesses," said Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group.

Looking ahead, Wu said revenue growth at Cloud Intelligence Group driven by AI will continue to improve. "We will continue to execute against our strategic priorities in e-commerce and cloud computing, including further investment to drive long-term growth," he added.

Revenue from Alibaba's core e-commerce business, which refers to its Taobao and Tmall platforms, rose 5 percent year-on-year to 136.1 billion yuan during this period.