Jack Ma Stages A Comeback To ‘Make Alibaba Great Again’

During China’s years-long crackdown on the tech sector, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s internal messaging boards lit up with dreams to “MAGA” – Make Alibaba Great Again. Now, the company is deploying one of its most potent weapons to accomplish that mission: Jack Ma.

After vanishing from the public eye at the outset of an antitrust investigation in late 2020, China’s most recognisable entrepreneur is back on Alibaba’s campuses – and he’s more directly involved than he’s been in half a decade, according to people familiar with the company. Signs of his unseen hand are coming into sharper focus, perhaps no more so than in its pivot to artificial intelligence and its declaration of war on e-commerce foes JD.com Inc. and Meituan. Ma was instrumental in Alibaba’s decision to spend as much as 50 billion yuan ($7 billion) on subsidies to beat back JD’s surprise entry to the market, said one of the people, requesting not to be named because the matter is private.

Alibaba, which since 2023 has been run by two of Ma’s longest-serving lieutenants, Joe Tsai and Eddie Wu, has not said whether Ma has returned in any official capacity. An Alibaba representative didn’t respond to an email with a detailed request for comment. But people familiar with its operations say the 61-year-old founder is at his most hands-on since resigning as chairman in 2019. Beyond helping orchestrate billions in spending, he’s also seeking constant updates on Alibaba’s broader AI endeavours. In one instance, he messaged a senior manager three times in a day asking for updates, according to one of the people.

Once China’s wealthiest and most prominent tech leader, Ma’s comeback has long been awaited as a signal that the country’s previously freewheeling tech sector is returning to favour in Beijing. While it’s unclear whether Beijing explicitly sanctioned his return, a handshake with President Xi Jinping in February was seen as his return to grace at a time when the country is looking to AI to boost growth. But he’s expected to keep a lower profile than before the crackdown, when he appeared on panels at Davos and judged an African talent show.

"Jack Ma is Alibaba's biggest PR figure, biggest personality, biggest idol," said Li Chengdong, head of Beijing-based internet think-tank Haitun. "The return of the big boss means he's no longer a risk, and that just gets everyone's blood pumping."

Ma is coming to terms with the new realities in Chinese e-commerce, marked by red-hot competition and a battle for retail users hunting for meals, groceries and electronics delivered in an hour or less. Top company officials are trying to make him understand that the days when Alibaba held 85% of the market are long gone, one of the people said. He’s betting that the company's core shopping platform Taobao can beat JD and Meituan following recent success in clawing back market share. As of July, Alibaba has 43% of China’s food delivery market, trailing Meituan with 47%, according to Goldman Sachs Inc.

But that battle could put Ma on a collision course with authorities who want to end what they’ve deemed “malicious subsidies,” and he’s risking fresh ire over Alibaba’s role in the price war.

It was a now-infamous speech Ma gave in 2020 that led him to retreat from the public eye. Days after publicly slamming Chinese lenders as “pawn shops,” regulators blocked plans to take Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group Co. public. Weeks later, Beijing launched a long-running campaign to tighten state control over the economy as it looked to rein in the nation’s billionaire class. Ma was abruptly thrust into the center of a regulatory storm that grew to envelop big rivals from Didi Global Inc. to then-giant online education firms, pushed fellow billionaire entrepreneurs into hiding and precipitated the biggest wealth destruction in modern Chinese history. Alibaba lost almost $700 billion of market value — equivalent to an entire Tencent Holdings Ltd. today.

Ma — perhaps the best-known symbol of the crackdown years — stepped away from the limelight, spending much of his time in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Staff morale plummeted during those years, which coincided with China’s tough pandemic restrictions. Ma’s absence in itself came to represent tough times at the company. So when he returned to Ant Group in December to give his first public speech there since 2020, some long-serving employees were so moved that they broke down in tears, one attendee said, asking for anonymity to discuss the private event.

During a visit to the headquarters of Alibaba’s cloud division in April, Ma walked past walls pinned with emotional messages from long-serving employees describing the difficulties the company faced during his time away. Flanked by staff sitting on mats on staircases, and with employees listening in from Tokyo and Hong Kong, Ma showed off his trademark eloquence, attendees said, also requesting anonymity to discuss the event.

“Technology isn’t just about conquering the stars and the oceans,” he said, according to a transcript reviewed by Bloomberg News. “It’s about preserving the spark in all of us.”

Ma went on to spell out the crucial role of the company’s cloud platform, its self-made T-head chips, and its Qwen family of AI models, about which he said he was receiving daily updates. After the event, some attendees said they felt pumped up and inspired, as if they had witnessed the culture of a startup on its first day.

Alibaba has come a long way since its founding in 1999, when Ma scraped together $80,000 from 80 investors to start an online marketplace. In 2014, it scored the single biggest coming-out party at the time with a $25 billion IPO. In the following years, it swung from strength to strength, pushing its market cap past $800 billion. But after Ma fell out with regulators, and the pandemic crippled China’s economy, its stock tanked.

As he looks to restore Alibaba’s former glory, Ma is counting on familiar faces Wu and Tsai as well as rising star Jiang Fan. Wu is viewed as more permanent than a transitional figure, and his tech background makes him well-placed to continue to lead, especially on AI, the people said. As chairman, Tsai serves as Ma’s main ally on the board, while Jiang has been entrusted to run a new-look e-commerce operation that today stretches from Singapore to Istanbul.

“Alibaba has clearly already been in very good hands with the return of pioneers like Eddie, Joe and Jiang Fan,” said Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privée. “It has refocused on technology and its core businesses with disciplined investments and arguably is now entering a phase where it starts to reap returns."

Wu is leading the company’s top priority: the pursuit of artificial general intelligence. In February, Alibaba vowed to spend more than 380 billion yuan on AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years. Although widespread AI monetisation remains out of reach, the company managed in August to notch a 26% jump in cloud revenue — its fastest pace of quarterly expansion in years. That helped push its stock increase for the year to 88% through Monday’s close, though its $380 billion market cap is less than half of its peak.

Beyond AI, Ma is also exerting influence on the core e-commerce business — still the biggest money-spinner. In 2023, Alibaba’s declining market share directly led Ma to lend his support for the ousting of then-CEO Daniel Zhang, according to a person close to Ma. The same year, he surprised employees by posting messages on an internal forum urging the company to “correct its course” as e-commerce upstart PDD Holdings Inc. teetered on the brink of surpassing Alibaba in market value, which it later did. The company is still recovering from a series of missteps under Zhang, who with Ma’s blessing poured billions of yuan into hypermarket chains in a misplaced bet that Chinese consumption would deepen and broaden. During Zhang’s tenure, Alibaba split into six separate units, including cloud and logistics, giving each the freedom to pursue its own IPO. But those plans were eventually shelved due to a skittish market. Firstred Capital, where Zhang went after leaving Alibaba, did not respond to a request for comment and declined to share his contact information.

“Jack has kind of a moral authority in the company to make the big calls and also to criticise executives, indirectly or directly, or criticise strategy when he thinks it's in the wrong direction,” said Duncan Clark, author of Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built. “He's not a day-to-day micromanager. But his word or his displeasure can be expressed in a way which will make the company make changes."

Jiang has been tasked to run Alibaba’s more unified e-commerce empire and he’s more closely coordinating food delivery, hotel booking and logistics operations. The former software engineer was part of a select group of executives personally mentored by Ma, according to people familiar with the matter. Although he was removed from Alibaba’s core leadership team that influences board appointments following a 2020 scandal, his position was reinstated this year.

While internally Ma’s return has boosted confidence in the company’s direction, it has also brought some challenges. His presence on campus has complicated the company’s reporting structure because some employees see him as Alibaba’s top decision maker, the people said. But he doesn’t have an official title and he’s stepped back from more granular decision making.

To some, Ma’s return feels like a last-ditch effort by a first-generation tech founder to reclaim his legacy. Like other early Alibaba employees, he adopted a moniker from fictional Kung Fu legends, and often compared the entrepreneurial path to a hero's quest.

“He’s probably convinced that it’s time to come out of seclusion and make his mark by defeating Meituan,” said Chen Weixing, founder of ride-hailing app Kuaidi Dache. “He’s living in the illusion of his own martial arts epic.”

Ma is unlikely to return to Alibaba in an official capacity. But these days, he wears a company badge wherever he goes on campus – a gesture employees interpret as a sign he’s back in action.

When he handed the reins to Zhang, Ma told Chinese state media: “Retirement doesn’t mean I’ve left Alibaba. If Alibaba calls me, I’ll always be there.”