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Xi Meets Jack Ma as Alibaba’s AI Soars, Monetization Debated

7/7/2026

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Summary

Story summary

Xi Jinping met tech executives, including Huawei’s head and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, in the Great Hall of the People, after Ma disappeared from public view when Beijing halted a $34 billion 2020 offering.
Alibaba re-emerged as an AI powerhouse, building a widely used system and open-sourcing models cheaper than U.S. rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
Alibaba’s AI team is split on how to monetize the models’ global popularity.

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Story summary

Xi Jinping met tech executives, including Huawei’s head and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, in the Great Hall of the People, after Ma disappeared from public view when Beijing halted a $34 billion 2020 offering.
Alibaba re-emerged as an AI powerhouse, building a widely used system and open-sourcing models cheaper than U.S. rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
Alibaba’s AI team is split on how to monetize the models’ global popularity.