($) Alibaba Cloud: No Longer Ignored
How Should We Think About Asia’s Biggest Cloud Now
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When I started writing this newsletter five years ago, my third post published on March 1, 2020 was called, “Alibaba Cloud: The Ignored Cloud”. Five years later, with an impressive earnings report last week, Jack Ma getting to shake hands with Xi Jinping, and this little AI thing blowing the tailwind, it is safe to say that Alibaba Cloud is no longer being ignored.
Re-reading that post from five years ago put me in a reflective mood. Since that piece, I’ve written about Alibaba Cloud at least a dozen times more, as the company went through a rollercoaster five-year period of trials and tribulations. Those challenges were both macro and micro in nature. Some were completely out of the company's control; others were totally self-inflicted wounds.
Before the collective market swings from completely ignoring Alibaba Cloud to now celebrating it as the next best AI bet, it is worth reliving this macro and micro rollercoaster again to build some perspectives.