Alibaba Group Holding Ltd ADR (NYSE:BABA), a Chinese multinational technology company led by Jack Ma, saw huge inflows from U.S.-based funds during the fourth quarter. However, many Asian funds exited the company despite its progress in the artificial intelligence arena.
What Happened: As U.S. institutional investors loaded up on BABA, Asian funds did not seem to place big bets on the firm during the fourth quarter. However, these 13F filings represent the last quarter of 2024, which was ahead of the BABA’s nearly 50% year-to-date performance in 2025, propelled by the launch of its flagship AI model, Qwen2.5-Max.
As of the fourth quarter, about 1,263 holders owned 324 million shares in the company, valued at $27.4 billion.
| Period | Filings | Shares, Excl. Options | Value, Excl. Options | Options Value |
| 2024 Q4 | 1,263 | 324 M | $27.4 B | $12.1 B |
Here is a list of key changes that a few funds made in the company.
- Major U.S. funds increased their stake in the company by four digits in the fourth quarter. UBS O’Connor added 193,910 shares or 7756% of BABA, increasing its value to $16.653 million as of the said quarter.
- Marathon Trading Investment Management LLC and AssetMark Inc. also increased their stakes by 4826% and 3406%, respectively. Whereas U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick‘s Cantor Fitzgerald LP also bumped its stake in the Chinese company by 2504%.
- Hong Kong-based funds like Trivest Advisors Ltd., Optimas Capital Ltd., and Infini Capital Management Ltd. exited BABA in the fourth quarter.
- Greenwoods Asset Management Hong Kong Ltd., a fund headquartered in Shanghai, China also exited the company by selling its 246,016 shares in the fourth quarter.
| Company | Holdings (as of Sept. 30) | Holdings (as of Dec. 31) | Change (in %) | Value As Of Dec. 31 |
| UBS O’Connor | 2,500 | 196,410 | 7756% | $16.653 million |
| Marathon Trading Investment Management LLC | 10,865 | 535,192 | 4826% | $45.378 million |
| AssetMark Inc. | 397 | 13,917 | 3406% | $1.180 million |
| Cantor Fitzgerald LP | 2,270 | 59,119 | 2504% | $5.012 million |
| Aspex Management (HK) Ltd | 1,093,054 | 0 | -100% | – |
| Trivest Advisors Ltd | 790,000 | 0 | -100% | – |
| Optimas Capital Ltd | 204,200 | 0 | -100% | – |
| Infini Capital Management Ltd | 198,050 | 0 | -100% | – |
| Greenwoods Asset Management Hong Kong Ltd | 246,016 | 0 | -100% | – |
Why It Matters: Alibaba is slated to report its quarterly earnings on Thursday, before the market opens. Benzinga Pro estimates the company to report earnings of $3.03 per share on the revenue of $38.82 billion in its third quarter.
Alibaba Cloud’s upgraded Qwen2.5-Max AI model outperformed leading open-source rivals like DeepSeek V3 and Meta’s Llama 3.1 on key benchmarks, and showed comparable performance to closed-source models GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, according to the details revealed by the company on WeChat.
This follows DeepSeek’s launch of its first reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1. DeepSeek’s claim of developing its model for only $5.6 million has sparked interest, contrasting with the typically high costs associated with AI development, though Alibaba Cloud hasn’t disclosed its own spending.
Price Action: BABA rose 1.74% on Tuesday and advanced further by 0.22% during after-hours trading, contrasting with a slight 0.23% uptick in the Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 (NASDAQ:QQQ), which tracks the Nasdaq 100 index. Despite this recent fall, BABA remains up 49.38% on a year-to-date basis and 73.50% over a year.
Benzinga tracks 23 analysts with an average price target of $120.55 for the stock, reflecting a “buy” rating. Estimates range widely from $85 to $155. Recent ratings from Citigroup, Barclays, and Benchmark average $128.67, suggesting a potential 1.17% downside.
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