Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) stock climbed nearly 5% in Monday’s premarket session as investor risk appetite improved. Nasdaq futures rose 0.57%, while S&P 500 futures gained 0.46%.
Alibaba’s early gains tracked the broader strength in U.S. equity futures as investors rotated back into large-cap technology stocks ahead of the opening bell.
The move also extends the stock’s recovery from its June lows. Shares are now approaching a key long-term technical level after spending much of the year below major moving averages.
The Chinese tech giant is trying to unlock more value from its AI strategy by widening access to its most powerful Qwen model, expanding workplace AI tools and positioning its cloud platform as a key layer for developers and enterprises.
Qwen3.8-Max Expands Alibaba’s AI Reach
Alibaba made its next-generation flagship AI model, Qwen3.8-Max, widely available to global users ahead of an open-weights release planned for next week.
The move marks Alibaba’s return to open-sourcing its top-tier AI models after keeping several recent flagship releases proprietary earlier this year, SCMP reported on Monday.
The 2.4-trillion-parameter model supports a context window of up to 1 million tokens and is available through Alibaba Cloud’s Model Studio APIs and QwenWork, the company’s workplace AI agent platform.
Alibaba said Qwen3.8-Max can process lengthy documents, television series and live streams to create searchable knowledge bases.
The company also said the model can recreate software applications from screenshots, generate interactive games and educational animations, and convert two-dimensional floor plans into 3D visualizations.
New Model Strengthens China AI Push
Alibaba said Qwen3.8-Max is suited for autonomous coding, complex research and long-running tasks. The company said the model ranked fifth on Text Arena and second on Vision Arena, trailing only select models from Anthropic’s Claude series.
Alibaba also said Qwen3.8-Max delivered performance comparable to, and in some cases better than, Anthropic’s Fable 5 on several benchmarks. The model also ranked ahead of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 on several measures, according to Alibaba’s shared results.
Union Bancaire Privée managing director Vey-Sern Ling told Bloomberg that many investors continue to underestimate Chinese AI models because of U.S. chip restrictions or broader skepticism. He said Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max adds another proof point that the gap with U.S. models is narrowing quickly after Kimi K3.
Pricing And QwenWork Add Commercial Potential
Alibaba priced Qwen3.8-Max at $2 per 1 million input tokens and $6 per 1 million output tokens, making the model look attractive compared with leading U.S. offerings.
Alibaba also launched QwenWork in public beta through web and desktop apps. The company said the workplace AI platform can draft documents, analyze data, generate audio and video, and build websites.
QwenWork combines Alibaba’s existing agent tools QoderWork, MuleRun and Wukong, and the company plans to integrate it into DingTalk. That gives Alibaba another route to bring its Qwen models into workplace productivity, enterprise software and developer workflows.
Technical Picture Continues To Improve
Alibaba traded around $128 in premarket trading. The stock stood 12.7% above its 20-day simple moving average of $113.41 and 12.1% above its 50-day simple moving average of $114.08, reflecting improving short-term momentum.
However, shares remained 9.4% below the 200-day simple moving average of $141.06, indicating the longer-term recovery is still developing.
The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) indicator remained above its signal line, while the histogram stayed positive. That suggests buying momentum is strengthening and selling pressure is easing.
Even so, the broader trend remains mixed. The 20-day moving average remains below the 50-day moving average, and the 50-day moving average is below the 200-day moving average, reflecting the bearish “death cross” formed in April.
The stock faces resistance near $139 at its 200-day moving average. On the downside, support is around $111.50, where buying interest resurfaced after the June lows.
Earnings And Analyst Outlook
Alibaba is expected to report quarterly results on Aug. 28.
Wall Street expects earnings of $2.51 per share on revenue of $38.72 billion, compared with earnings of $2.06 per share and revenue of $34.57 billion in the year-ago quarter.
The stock carries a consensus Buy rating with an average analyst price forecast of $192.67. Recent analyst actions include:
- Susquehanna maintained a Positive rating and raised its price forecast to $185 on May 15.
- JPMorgan maintained an Overweight rating and increased its price forecast to $205 on May 14.
- Barclays maintained an Overweight rating and raised its price forecast to $195 on May 14.
Benzinga Edge Ratings
Benzinga Edge rates Alibaba highly for value and growth but assigns weaker scores for momentum and quality.
The stock has a Value score of 92.16 and a Growth score of 86.54, suggesting investors continue to see attractive long-term fundamentals. However, its Momentum score of 15.02 and Quality score of 17.66 indicate the recovery remains uneven.
ETF Ownership
Alibaba is a meaningful holding in several emerging-market exchange-traded funds, including:
- Avantis Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NYSE:AVEM): 0.78% weighting
- Nomura Focused Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NASDAQ:EMEQ): 2.85% weighting
- Avantis Responsible Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NYSE:AVSE): 0.94% weighting
Large inflows or outflows in these funds could result in additional buying or selling of Alibaba shares.
BABA Stock Price Activity: Alibaba shares were up 4.73% at $128.03 during premarket trading on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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