Jack Ma hit the trillion-yuan IPO on the STAR Market

Three years ago, he decided to return to China — and he won the bet again.

Three years ago, Jack Ma stepped away from his laid-back life among European wine estates and private yachts to come back to China, making headlines. Back then, no one could fathom his true intentions behind the return.

Three years later, on July 16th, the highly anticipated Changxin Technology officially opened for subscription, raising 66.6 billion yuan. This figure surpasses SMIC, making it the largest IPO in the history of the STAR Market.

The Alibaba Group stands out prominently in the prospectus, holding a combined stake of nearly 5% — almost double the 2.65% owned by founder Zhu Yiming.

Based on Changxin Technology's optimistic valuation of 3 trillion yuan, Alibaba's unrealized gains on this investment will exceed 100 billion yuan.

It turns out Jack Ma returned to China to go all in on a new venture. Over three years, Alibaba has fully committed to AI, and he has made the right bet once more. Changxin Technology serves as a critical validation of this strategic gamble.

As a permanent partner of Alibaba, Jack Ma has stayed behind the scenes for years, yet none of his key strategic moves have been diminished.

1.

The story of Changxin Technology is widely known. Behind it stands the Hefei state-owned capital camp, holding approximately 36.79% and acting as the de facto largest shareholder. They are followed by the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund with 8.73%, an employee stock ownership platform with 8.37%, Anhui Provincial Investment Group with 7.91%, and then Alibaba with a 5% stake.

In December 2021, Alibaba appeared for the first time on Changxin's shareholder list.

At that time, the memory chip industry was in a downward cycle, with global DRAM prices plummeting. Even giants like Samsung and SK Hynix were operating at a loss, while Changxin burned through tens of billions annually and still remained in the red. It was at this exact moment that Alibaba stepped in, acquiring roughly a 2% stake.

No one understood the logic back then. Why would an e-commerce company buy into the chip sector?

Four years later, in June 2025, during the final capital increase round before Changxin's IPO, Alibaba made a large additional investment to raise its stake to nearly 5%, securing its position as the fifth-largest shareholder.

It was then that people realized Alibaba was investing in the infrastructure of the AI era.

Alibaba's T-Head AI chip ranked second only to Huawei in domestic shipments in 2025. Alibaba Cloud is China's largest public cloud provider, while Changxin is the only domestic player with mass production capabilities for DRAM. When connected together, the three components form a complete AI industry chain.

Alibaba wasn't just buying shares — it was locking in a future ammunition depot for its own cloud and semiconductor businesses.

Changxin is merely a snapshot of Alibaba's dramatic strategic shift in investments over the past three years.

Seven or eight years ago, as the world's second-largest e-commerce company, Alibaba was passionate about new retail investments. Jack Ma led the charge, pouring hundreds of billions of yuan to acquire companies such as Intime Retail, Sun Art Retail, and Ele.me.

However, as economic headwinds grew stronger and consumer trends shifted, the new retail sector became a flickering candle, easily extinguished. The regulatory storm targeting internet platforms also delivered a harsh lesson to Alibaba.

The very year Jack Ma returned to China, Alibaba's investment strategy pivoted sharply, with consecutive moves in the AI sector. Among the "Six Young Titans" of large model startups, Alibaba invested in five: Zhipu AI, Baichuan AI, 01.AI, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax. In the field of embodied intelligence, it backed companies such as Dyna Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, Unitree Robotics, and Auto Robotics.

On the computing power infrastructure front, in addition to Changxin, Alibaba also has stakes in Montage Technology and its own T-Head semiconductor business.

Over three years, Alibaba's total external investments from new retail to AI have exceeded 40 billion yuan. Just as Amazon transitioned from e-commerce to AWS cloud services, Alibaba is searching for its own "second growth curve" — transforming from a consumer internet company into an AI infrastructure enterprise.

2.

Stories always gain more legendary flair when their central figure makes a triumphant return.

Three years ago, when Jack Ma returned to China after an extended period of overseas residency and rode in that Coaster van, the outside world interpreted his actions through countless complex lenses.

But looking back now, after all the hype has faded, what remains is an exceptionally clear, resolute, almost obsessive focus: AI.

During those low-profile days away from the spotlight, this iconic figure of the Chinese internet industry clearly foresaw the massive wave about to surge across the tech landscape: artificial intelligence.

This was far more than just a homecoming — it resembled a "second venture" expedition with a clear and defined mission.

His first stop after returning was Yunqi School, where he spoke extensively about AI. In subsequent internal communications, he elevated AI to the status of "Alibaba's future."

In May 2024, Joe Tsai and Wu Yongming jointly released a letter to shareholders, formally positioning "e-commerce + AI" as Alibaba's dual core businesses. In February 2025, after Jack Ma attended a private enterprise symposium, Alibaba dropped a 380-billion-yuan "nuclear bomb" of investment in AI.

This narrative carries a strong sense of destiny. More than two decades ago, Jack Ma, working out of a residential apartment in Lakeside Garden, firmly believed the internet would change the world. Three years ago, he returned with that same unwavering conviction, predicting that AI would reshape every form of business.

His first bet paid off, making Alibaba the undisputed hegemon of Chinese e-commerce. The second time, he returned at a critical moment to set the strategic direction, staying behind the scenes to ensure Alibaba wouldn't get left behind at this historical turning point.

Over these three years, Tongyi Qianwen has become one of China's most widely adopted open-source large models, with Apple selecting it to power the AI features for iPhones in China. Alibaba Cloud holds a 35.8% share of China's AI cloud market, and its investments in companies like Changxin Technology and Moonshot AI have yielded substantial returns.

Today, the Changxin investment alone could recoup all of Alibaba's initial costs. The projected 100-billion-yuan unrealized gain feels like a metaphor: the returns from betting on a technological revolution are large enough to fund several rounds of intense food delivery market wars.

It also feels like the answer to a full-circle question: the man who built an e-commerce empire through business model innovation now aims to surpass that empire through hardcore technological innovation.

This is not only Jack Ma's personal gamble but also a race against time for Alibaba to reshape its corporate DNA.

3.

Alibaba is far from walking this path alone. Zoom out, and you'll see global tech giants are all staging the same play: aggressively expanding their territory and placing heavy bets on AI.

Tencent's moves mirror Alibaba's, though its strategy carries more defensive undertones. Pony Ma has placed his chips on integrating large model capabilities with cloud computing. Tencent has invested in MiniMax, Deep Potential, and Baichuan AI, while also taking stakes in numerous robotics companies.

DeepSeek stands out as Tencent's most notable investment. In that oversubscribed funding round where investors scrambled to get a seat at the table, Tencent secured a prominent position, investing 10 billion yuan to acquire a 20% stake.

JD.com's AI layout is more pragmatic, centered on the logic of "supply chain scenarios + AI." It has poured massive resources into robotics companies specializing in warehousing and logistics, including leading players like Geek+ and Quicktron.

On the large model front, JD.com also invested 5 billion yuan to join DeepSeek's shareholder roster. Liu Qiangdong once stated internally, "We won't build foundational models ourselves, but we will become their best possible users."

Meituan's choices are equally intriguing. Wang Xing has successfully invested in Zhipu AI and Moonshot AI, while fully committing to embodied intelligence and robotics. Between 2023 and 2025, Meituan backed multiple robotics companies including Pudu Robotics and Unitree Robotics.

In their race to secure high-potential AI targets, these tech giants are even setting aside past rivalries to collaborate. Recently, the BAT trio (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) all appeared together on Kling's shareholder list, while JD.com and Alibaba, or Alibaba and Tencent, frequently form flexible alliances.

Overseas, the same strategy has already played out on an even larger scale with higher price tags. Microsoft invested 13 billion dollars in OpenAI, while Google acquired DeepMind and later poured over 2 billion dollars into Anthropic. Every major tech company is racing to tie their fates closely to emerging AI startups.

The most dramatic scene unfolds in the secondary market valuation landscape. Meituan, a local services giant, has seen its market cap surpassed by Zhipu AI shortly after Zhipu's IPO. Kuaishou spun off Kling, and the latter's valuation now exceeds that of its parent company.

This is not merely a vote of confidence from capital — it is a metaphor for the handover of power from an old era to a new one.

These established giants and emerging AI startups have forged a delicate symbiotic relationship. The incumbents provide ammunition (capital and computing power), while the newcomers deliver vision and top-tier talent.

This is a high-stakes gamble on the future. Their greatest fear isn't losing money on investments — it's missing out entirely. The cost of being left behind in a technological wave is far more devastating than the loss of a single investment.

Of course, fueled by widespread FOMO (fear of missing out), massive bubbles have formed in the market. Reports from the U.S. stock market indicate that Anthropic and OpenAI may struggle to go public quickly, as their trillion-dollar valuations are simply too large for the secondary market to absorb.

Whether Changxin Technology's optimistic trillion-yuan or even 3-trillion-yuan valuation can be realized will depend on how the secondary market actually evolves.

At the very least, the consecutive upcoming listings of Zhipu AI, Changxin Technology, and Unitree Robotics will allow these tech giants to cash out substantial returns quickly.

4.

Nine days later, on July 27th, Changxin Technology will make its official debut on the stock exchange. The market widely expects its market cap to surge past 1 trillion yuan.

This is destined to be a remarkable wealth creation event. At a 1-trillion-yuan valuation, Hefei's state-owned capital is projected to see 300 billion yuan in unrealized gains, while the national fund, Anhui provincial investment entities, and Alibaba will each reap tens of billions in profits. Many employees will also become instant billionaires.

This is a gift from the era.

There are also those left behind by the times, such as Country Garden. They once held a 1.56% stake in Changxin Technology, but were forced to sell their entire position for 2 billion yuan two years ago amid cash flow pressures, missing out on hundreds of billions in potential gains.

Three years ago, the moment Jack Ma returned to China felt like a butterfly flapping its wings, triggering a hurricane across the entire business world.

This industrial transformation, spanning real estate, e-commerce, and AI, belongs not only to Alibaba and Jack Ma — it also belongs to emerging AI companies like DeepSeek, Zhipu AI, and Changxin Technology, which have now become the brightest stars of this era.

Jack Ma is halfway through his game, and Changxin's tens of billions in unrealized gains is just a footnote in the AI era.

Not long ago, Jack Ma led Alibaba's partners on a team-building trip to plant rice seedlings, appearing brimming with confidence. This is what "aligning with the times" looked like in 2026: an e-commerce king who stepped back from the spotlight years ago can still stand shoulder to shoulder with state-owned capital in the AI era.

Changxin Technology won't be the last trillion-yuan IPO. Jack Ma and Alibaba's AI investment journey is far from over.

Jack Ma has won another bet. The cards haven't all been played, but this time, he's sitting at the right table.

This article originates from the WeChat Official Account "Future Land", authored by Zhai Zong, and published by 36Kr with authorization.