Alibaba’s Been Cramming in the Deals Over the Holiday Season

Over the holiday season, Alibaba Group has been busy doing deals, with an emphasis on selling off assets and some losses. The Chinese technology behemoth kicked off 2025 by announcing it had shed more than 70 % of its stake in Sun Art Retail Group, a hypermarket chain. The deal was completed at a major discount to its former $3 billion valuation. Just weeks before that, Alibaba had reached a deal to divest its department store business, Intime Retail Group, at a $1.3 billion loss.

These steps are part of a broader effort to refocus the company. Alibaba also established a $4 billion joint venture with E-Mart Inc'sGmarket in South Korea. The company has been busy with big deals, led by the issuance of a record-setting convertible bond in May, followed by the sale of public dollar bonds and offshore yuan notes for almost $5 billion.

These latest acts seem to confirm that Alibaba is now accelerating in pursuance of its deals after an extended break. Beijing has recently aimed for a crackdown on tech firms, citing monopolistic practices at Alibaba that are causing this slowdown. However, the top-down crackdown is now over, and China is advocating for investment in technology for economic purposes.

When announcing the sale of Sun Art, Alibaba described it as "a good opportunity" to extract value from non-core assets. That aligns with the company's plan of vertical integration of its e-commerce operation while bringing in cash for future investments. The move also comes as Alibaba Group aims to grow in the AI space with more investment in technology and e-commerce.

The asset sales highlight Alibaba's focus on technology, e-commerce, and AI, according to Catherine Lim, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. It comes as Eddie Wu is set to enter his second year as the company's CEO. Alibaba's stock fell slightly, by 1.3%, in Hong Kong but recouped those losses and gained as much as 3% the next day, suggesting investors trust the company's strategy in the coming times.

The moves underscore Alibaba's push to streamline its operations and focus on key areas such as e-commerce, technology investment and AI as it contends with a shifting economic and regulatory environment in China.