Alibaba’s logo was photographed on April 1, 2026 during a tour at Alibaba’s offices in Beijing.
Wang Zhao | AFP | Getty Images
A mysterious AI video model that climbed the global leaderboard has been confirmed to be a project by a giant Chinese technology company alibabaa development that could boost the company’s artificial intelligence ambitions.
HappyHorse-1.0 appeared on benchmarking platform Artificial Analysis around April 7th without identifying any affiliation, and rose to the top of the blind test rankings in both text-to-video and image-to-video generation.
The developers revealed on Friday on their newly created X account that HappyHorse is part of Alibaba’s ATH AI innovation unit and that the project is still in development. Alibaba confirmed to CNBC that the post was genuine.
The model’s anonymous debut sparked online speculation that the developer could be a tech giant like: tencent or Alibaba or independent developers.
Hong Kong listed stocks alibaba The stock closed 2.12% higher on Friday following reports of involvement. On Wednesday, the company’s stock rose 6.75%. This was boosted by a broad rally in tech stocks following the de-escalation of tensions between the US and Iran, and speculation that Alibaba may be behind the mysterious model.
Alibaba is rapidly expanding its AI services amid fierce competition in China, building on its flagship Qwen large language model and chatbot app.
Alibaba’s previous AI model series have included dedicated video generation capabilities, but none have generated as much buzz or received as much acclaim as Happy Horse in just a few days.
HappyHorse-1.0 could strengthen Alibaba’s position in the video generation space, where competitors have faced setbacks.
OpenAI recently discontinued its Sora video generation app and platform, citing a strategic shift to focus on coding tools, enterprise customers, and AGI development amid high computing costs.
OpenAI’s withdrawal could potentially cede further ground to Chinese competitors, while ByteDance was recently forced to pause the rollout of its viral SeaDance 2.0 following copyright disputes with major Hollywood studios and streaming platforms.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu has made AI development a top priority for the tech giant’s vast business, which also includes chip design and data centers.
Alibaba has previously integrated its AI models into other e-commerce, advertising and entertainment products, and could be aiming to do the same with Happyhorse.
