Alibaba workforce shrinks 34% in 2025 as Chinese tech giant doubles down on AI

Alibaba’sIts workforce is down nearly 34% through 2025 as the company phases out some of its offline retail businesses while doubling down on AI.

The Chinese e-commerce and technology giant had 128,197 employees, compared to 194,320 employees at the end of December.

The latest headcount announcement came in an earnings report published on Thursday, which showed the firm’s profits fell by 67% and revenue was below expectations for the final three months of last year.

The company’s shares in Hong Kong were trading down 6% on Friday.

The bulk of Alibaba’s workforce reduction occurred in the March 2025 quarter following the sale. Sun Art The technology giant also exited its shares in the department store chain On time around the same period.

China’s second-largest tech company by market value is among other major tech firms that have cut headcount in the past year, from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou, China.

Alibaba’s staff supported an expanding network of business units spanning e-commerce, cloud, logistics and other related services.

However, Alibaba has been steadily reducing headcount in recent years, but the latest cuts were much larger than the 11% reduction made in December 2024 from the previous year.

This comes as Alibaba is trying to offload its labor-intensive assets and restructure its core businesses with a focus on artificial intelligence.

The technology giant aims to become a full-service artificial intelligence company, ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to computing and artificial intelligence models.

The company this week launched an agency AI service for businesses, known as Wukong, and raised prices for its cloud and storage services by up to 34% amid rising demand and supply chain costs.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said during the earnings call Thursday that the company aims to grow cloud and AI revenue to more than $100 billion annually in the next five years.