Alibaba plunges after announcing $10.2 billion share placement to fund AI push

Night view of Alibaba's headquarters building located by the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China on Nov. 16, 2025. CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty ImagesAlibaba shares plunged as much as 10% in Hong Kong on Monday after the Chinese tech giant priced an 80 billion Hong Kong dollar ($10.20 billion) placement of newly issued shares to non-U.S. investors. The company said it plans to use all of the net proceeds to invest in its full-stack AI capabilities, including expanding and enhancing its AI infrastructure.Alibaba will issue 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 apiece, compared with the stock's Friday closing price of HK$123. Shares were last trading 8.4% lower at HK$112.7.The share placement, expected to close on Wednesday, comes just days after Alibaba reported a 75% drop in profit for the June-quarter as heavy AI spending weighed on its results. Capital expenditure jumped 75% to 67.7 billion yuan. Vey-Sern Ling, senior equity advisor at UBP, told CNBC last week following Alibaba's latest earnings that the company was well-positioned to pursue AI growth. "I think Alibaba clearly is well positioned to chase that growth, given that they have a cloud computing arm, they have a very st...