Alibaba says to begin re-hiring, sees signs of start of AI bubble in the US

Summary:

• Tsai said tech companies taking heart from meeting with Xi
• Alibaba's headcount had been declining for 12 quarters
• Says some data center announcements worrying, sees start of AI bubble

Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai said on Tuesday the tech giant would recommence hiring, emboldened with more confidence following President Xi Jinping's February meeting with business entrepreneurs.

The rare meeting with Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and other big names in Chinese tech marked a distinct thawing in Beijing's approach to the sector. The industry was hit by a regulatory clampdown four years ago that had sapped corporate appetite for investment and led to widespread layoffs.

The meeting also reflected policymakers' concerns about a slowdown in growth in the world's second-largest economy and US efforts to limit China's technological development, analysts have said.

"I think we have seen a very clear sign of businesses entrepreneurs becoming more confident ... since President Xi met with private businesses," Tsai told HSBC's Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong.

"And that was a very, very clear signal to the business community that, go ahead, reinvest in your business and also go out and hire people," he said.

He noted Alibaba's headcount had been declining for the past 12 quarters.

"So I think we've reached the bottom, and we're going to start to reboot and rehire."

China's economy has been beset by sputtering growth over the past few years, also hobbled by a debt crisis in the real estate sector and trade tensions with the US, leading to job insecurity, high unemployment for the country's youth and weak consumer sentiment.

Hiring, however, would lead to good things, Tsai said.

"Once you hire people, that gives people job security, right, job security and income growth that will translate from business confidence into consumer confidence," he said.

Separately, while Alibaba has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence, Tsai said he was "astounded by the type of numbers that's being thrown around" in the United States.

"People are talking about $500 billion, several hundred billion dollars. I don't think that's entirely necessary. I think in a way, people are investing ahead of the demand that they're seeing today."

He said that he thought it was worrying when people began to talk about building data centers on spec and that he was seeing "the beginning of some kind of bubble."

Alibaba plans to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next three years.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Tech Index, comprising leading tech companies including Alibaba, has risen 24% this year, fuelled by Xi's meeting with tech sector leaders and excitement over Chinese startup DeepSeek's low-cost AI models.