Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares (BABA-W) surged 5.01% during intraday trading on Friday, extending a robust rebound as investors cheered the company's latest AI advancements and a broader shift in global tech investment flows.

The rally was fueled by Alibaba's recent launch of its Qwen 3.8 large language model, which the market views as a significant demonstration of the company's competitive strength amid intensifying AI model iteration among peers. Analysts noted that concerns over Alibaba Cloud's revenue deceleration and margin compression have largely dissipated, with cloud business margins expected to benefit from the higher average profitability of AI cloud services. Several institutions have raised their cloud segment profit forecasts for the company.

Additionally, global tech markets have exhibited a clear rotation of capital from hardware-focused sectors such as semiconductors toward software-oriented internet platforms. This hard-to-soft fund rotation, combined with southbound capital net buying in Alibaba despite broader market outflows, provided multiple tailwinds that collectively supported the stock's sharp upward move.