Alibaba’s booth at the World Congress on Artificial Intelligence held at the Shanghai Expo Exhibition Center in Shanghai, China, on July 5, 2024.
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alibabaThe company’s workforce fell by about 34% in 2025 as it doubled down on artificial intelligence while shedding some of its offline retail business.
The Chinese e-commerce and technology giant had 128,197 employees at the end of December, down from 194,320 in the same period a year earlier.
The latest headcount disclosures were revealed in an earnings report released Thursday, showing the company’s profits plunged 67% and revenue fell short of expectations for the final three months of last year.
The company’s shares fell 6% in Hong Kong on Friday.
The bulk of Alibaba’s job cuts were revealed in the fiscal year ending March 2025, following the sale of Sun Art Retail Group at the end of 2024. The tech giant also shed its stake in department store chain Intime around the same time.
China’s second-largest tech company by market capitalization is one of a number of large tech companies from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou, China, that have cut staff numbers over the past year.
Alibaba’s staff has supported a vast network of business units across e-commerce, cloud, logistics, and other related services.
However, while Alibaba has been steadily cutting its workforce in recent years, the latest round of layoffs was significantly larger than the 11% year-over-year reduction in December 2024.
This comes as Alibaba seeks to reduce its labor-intensive asset holdings and restructure its core business with a primary focus on artificial intelligence.
The tech giant aims to become a full-stack AI company, from semiconductor manufacturing to computing and AI models.
The company this week launched an agent AI service known as Wukong for enterprises and raised prices for its cloud and storage services by up to 34%, citing rising demand and supply chain costs.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said during an earnings call Thursday that the company aims to grow its cloud and AI revenue to more than $100 billion annually over the next five years.
