Alibaba (BABA) Stock Pops As Michael Burry Takes a Position and AI Push Accelerates

TLDR

• BABA rose 1.5% to $133.28 on Wednesday, outperforming the S&P 500’s 0.80% gain
• Alibaba’s cloud unit announced a security-focused pricing overhaul aimed at higher-value enterprise contracts
• The company launched Qwen3.6-Plus, a multimodal AI model targeting enterprise workflows and agentic coding
• Michael Burry reported a new position in BABA; Barclays maintained its Overweight rating
• 16 analysts rate BABA a Buy with an average price target of $187.68, though Zacks carries a Strong Sell rank

Alibaba (BABA) closed Wednesday at $133.28, up 1.47% on the day. That beat the S&P 500’s 0.80% gain and matched the Nasdaq’s 1.6% rise. Volume came in at around 8.5 million — about 29% below the stock’s daily average.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited, BABA

The move came on a day with a few things worth paying attention to.

Alibaba’s cloud division announced a security-focused pricing overhaul. The market read it as a push toward stickier, higher-value enterprise deals — the kind that tend to produce better margins over time.

The company also launched Qwen3.6-Plus, a production-grade multimodal AI model built for agentic coding and enterprise use. It’s designed to deepen the link between AI usage and cloud consumption, which is where Alibaba wants to grow revenue.

Investor Interest Picks Up

Michael Burry — the investor known for his 2008 housing short — reportedly took a new position in BABA. That kind of name recognition tends to pull in momentum buyers.

Barclays kept its Overweight rating on the stock, though it trimmed its price target slightly. The bank said it remains confident in Alibaba’s AI investment strategy over the medium term.

Several large institutional investors also added to their positions in Q4. Northwestern Mutual boosted its stake by over 7,600%, adding nearly 6 million new shares. Norges Bank opened a fresh position worth around $594 million. Capital World Investors added 466,847 shares, lifting its total to 6.5 million.

Institutional ownership sits at 13.47% of the total float.

Analyst Picture Is Mixed

The broader analyst community rates BABA a “Moderate Buy.” Sixteen analysts have Buy ratings and six have Hold ratings. The average price target sits at $187.68 — well above where the stock is trading now.

But not everyone is optimistic. Zacks currently rates BABA a Strong Sell (#5), after the consensus EPS estimate fell nearly 20% over the past month.

The stock also trades below both its 50-day moving average of $138.87 and its 200-day moving average of $154.77. That’s a technical headwind worth watching.

Alibaba’s Forward P/E is 18.25, a premium to the industry average of 16.58. Its PEG ratio is 2.11, compared to an industry average of 0.93.

Over the past month, BABA is down 3.82% — trailing the Retail-Wholesale sector’s 7.22% gain and the S&P 500’s 5.15% rise in that same stretch.

Alibaba’s next earnings report is expected to show EPS of $1.22, down about 29% year-over-year. Revenue is projected at $35.23 billion, up 8.12% from the same quarter last year.

For the full fiscal year, analysts project earnings of $5.08 per share and revenue of $148.97 billion.

In its most recent quarterly report (February 14), Alibaba posted revenue of $40.71 billion with a net margin of 9.12% and return on equity of 7.43%.

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