Alibaba Net Income Plummets 75% on $10 Billion AI Spend as Cloud Revenue Surges 45%

China's largest e-commerce company saw its bottom line shrink to 10.4 billion yuan for the June quarter, reflecting the high cost of building out its artificial intelligence infrastructure. Net income fell 75% as capital expenditure rose 75% to 67.7 billion yuan ($10 billion) to increase CPU compute capacity and purchase chip components. Revenue rose 9% to 268.95 billion yuan ($39.6 billion), beating analysts' expectations, though non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS of 8.52 yuan missed the estimated 11.26 yuan.

The spending surge accompanies a full-stack AI strategy that has delivered triple-digit growth in AI-related product revenue for 12 consecutive quarters. Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu stated that the company aims to shorten the payback period for AI investments to 2.5 years. While Alibaba expects higher profitability as proprietary chips replace commercial versions in its data centers, the company noted that domestic e-commerce continues to face macroeconomic challenges.