Alibaba

Chelsea plan to hijack Man Utd's Varane dealManchester United's deal for Raphael Varane could be under threat, with the Star reporting that Chelsea are planning to launch a late bid for the French defender. Varane's move to Old Trafford had been all-but confirmed in Friday's papers, but now the Red…

A major e-commerce platform in China has included non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for sale at its annual festival. Taobao has held its Maker Festival since 2016. And this year, the festival has welcomed a series of NFTs from artist Huang He Shan, who worked with blockchain gaming company Web3Games and decentralized…

Chinese short video app Douyin is testing a new food delivery feature, Chinese media Tech Planet reported Thursday. Douyin’s parent company ByteDance is heading to a crowded sector dominated by local services app Meituan and Alibaba’s Eleme. Douyin is testing the service, called Xindong Waimai, and has yet to release it…

Tencent, Alibaba to build ecosystem connectivity, and Chinese Internet may usher in new opportunities It’s reported that Tencent and Alibaba will soon open their ecosystems. Alibaba will allow access to WeChat Pay in the e-commerce field, and Tencent will allow Alibaba to develop e-commerce services in WeChat ecosystem. This news…

Alibaba-backed mapping app AutoNavi is evolving into an “open service platform” to integrate a range of dining, entertainment, and lifestyle services, chairman Yu Yongfu said at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday. China’s most popular map app, with more than 47 million monthly active users as of November 2020,…

IN AMERICA, IF you want to dominate an industry, you channel your inner Elon Musk and shout about it. But CATL, the Chinese company that makes batteries for some of Mr Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles (EVs), is different. When your columnist first contacted it in 2017, the brush-off was swift.…

Food delivery giant Zomato on Wednesday launched its much-anticipated IPO to raise 93.75 billion rupees ($1.3 billion), India's biggest this year and the first of a series of public listings by tech unicorns. Zomato -- which counts subsidiaries of Uber and Jack Ma's Ant Group among its existing shareholders --…

Tencent and Alibaba may establish connections between some of their services, partially breaking down the walls these companies previously erected around their respective techno-gardens. The move is a consequence of the State Administration for Market Regulation’s crackdown on anticompetitive business practices by tech companies in China, and may significantly reshape…

(Source: Zebra Zhixing) On Wednesday, Zebra Zhixing announced that Alibaba Group, SAIC Group, SDIC and Yunfeng Fund jointly increased their capital by ¥3 billion in Shanghai. Zhang Chunhui, co-CEO of Zebra Zhixing, said that the company would increase investment in the research and development of its operating systems to facilitate…

(Source: The Grey Rhino) China’s two online competitors, Alibaba and Tencent, are gradually considering opening up their services to each other, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday. Alibaba’s plans to introduce Tencent’s WeChat Pay to its own e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall. In return, Tencent may allow…