Why Alibaba Stock Gained 16.6% Last Month

Shares of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) rose 16.6% in January 2025, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The China-based e-commerce and cloud computing giant soared on the same news that drove Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares nearly 11% lower last month: the introduction of a new artificial intelligence (AI) system called DeepSeek.

Alibaba is not the company behind DeepSeek. The innovative large language model (LLM) is run by a software company by the same name, privately owned by a Chinese hedge fund named High-Flyer.

That being said, Alibaba manages an LLM of its own, called Qwen. The company was quick to introduce DeepSeek services on its cloud platform, giving clients the option to train their own DeepSeek-based LLMs with proprietary data feeds. It also released a new version of Qwen, Quen2.5, immediately after DeepSeek made a splash. The upgrade was unexpected because it fell on the first day of Lunar New Year -- an important holiday on the Chinese calendar.

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Source Fool.com