On the evening of May 23rd, Alibaba Group released its 2024 annual report. According to the annual report, in the fiscal year 2024, Alibaba Group's revenue increased by 8% year-on-year to 941.168 billion yuan, and adjusted EBITA increased by 12% year-on-year to 165.028 billion yuan.
As Alibaba celebrates its first anniversary of self transformation, it has stated that it will continue to invest in two major areas: accelerating core business growth, and maintaining a leading position in basic technology and innovation, including AI.
Returning to the growth track
The annual report shows that Taotian Group's revenue is 434.9 billion yuan, and platform consumers continue to show high retention rates; Alibaba International Digital Business Group's revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 46%, Cainiao Group's revenue increased by 28%, and the daily fulfillment of cross-border and international business exceeded 5 million packages; Alibaba Cloud's adjusted EBITA increased by 49% year-on-year.
Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming stated that this quarter's performance indicates the effectiveness of the group's strategy, and Alibaba is returning to its growth trajectory. "By focusing on user experience, both Taotian and international e-commerce businesses have achieved double-digit year-on-year growth in GMV. At the same time, he said that the group is also pleased to see the accelerated growth of AI product customers and related cloud computing revenue.".
In the fiscal year 2024, Alibaba clearly stated that "users first," The strategic direction of AI driven, sorting out business priorities, and focusing on the two core businesses of e-commerce and cloud computing.
In the field of e-commerce, targeting the vast global consumer market, Alibaba has both Taotian Group, which serves domestic consumers, and International Digital Business Group, which serves international users. Cainiao serves as the infrastructure to provide supply chain, transportation, and distribution capabilities for domestic and international e-commerce, ensuring a good shopping experience for users.
Taotian Group insists on providing consumers with a shopping experience of "good products, good prices, and good services", and firmly invests in experience improvement and product supply. Taobao and Tmall consumers continue to show high retention rates. In the fiscal year 2024, the number of active consumers who spend over 10000 yuan on commercial retail platforms in China continued to grow.
In the fiscal year 2024, the overall order growth of Alibaba International Digital Business Group's retail business exceeded 20%, and international retail business revenue increased by 60% year-on-year. The improvement of cross-border performance efficiency and user experience has driven the rapid growth of AliExpress Choice business. In the fiscal year 2024, Cainiao's cross-border and international business fulfilled an average of over 5 million packages per day.
In the fiscal year 2024, the volume of Ele.me orders increased strongly year-on-year; The order volume of Gaode's "to destination" business has grown rapidly year-on-year, with a daily active user peak of over 280 million in the fiscal year, reaching a historic high.
As one of Alibaba's first batch of strategic innovation businesses, 1688, Xianyu, DingTalk, and Quark, which are widely loved by users, have also experienced accelerated growth. In the fiscal year 2024, there were over 1 million paid members on 1688, and the number of active users on quark days increased rapidly year-on-year; In March 2024, the daily active users among DingTalk's paid users reached 28 million.
"AI driven" growth
The innovation of AI technology is bringing about tremendous industry changes, which contain broader growth opportunities for cloud business and also bring imagination to various application scenarios of Alibaba through AI transformation. Under the "AI driven" strategy, Alibaba regards AI as the driving force for breakthrough user experience and business models.
Last April, Alibaba officially released the basic big model Tongyi Qianwen. Within a year, Alibaba upgraded its AI infrastructure and firmly built the most open cloud in the AI era; Establish a "universal large model+vertical large model" system at the model level, and gradually launch more than ten models along the "full mode, full size" open source route; At the application layer, the business fully embraces AI, giving birth to numerous products such as DingTalk AI Assistant, Consumer Recommendation "Taobao Ask", "AI Fitting Room", etc. While improving user experience, it also expands AI application scenarios.
In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, Alibaba delivered a transcript of accelerated AI growth, and Alibaba Cloud's AI related revenue achieved a three digit year-on-year growth. Behind the high growth, Alibaba adheres to the principle of "AI driven", actively invests in AI infrastructure construction and large-scale models, and welcomes the huge opportunities for the development of the AI industry.
The Tongyi Big Model naturally matches the business model of Alibaba Cloud's computing business. At present, Alibaba has a large model Tongyi Qianwen and advanced AI infrastructure, providing powerful and cost-effective large model services for many developers and enterprises. The training and use of large models both bring incremental demands for computing power and traditional cloud computing products. It is worth noting that the open source model of Tongyi and the AI open source community magic built by Alibaba have greatly expanded the ecosystem of this business model and contributed positively to growth.
At present, the self-developed large-scale model Tongyi Qianwen has completed multiple iterations. The Tongyi Qianwen 2.5 released on May 9th has a comprehensive model performance that surpasses the GPT-4 Turbo; The latest open source 110 billion parameter model from Tongyi Qianwen has achieved the best results in multiple benchmark evaluations, becoming the most powerful model in the open source field.
The implementation and application process of Tongyi is accelerating. Data shows that the Tongyi Big Model has served over 90000 enterprises through Alibaba Cloud and over 2.2 million enterprises through DingTalk services. A large number of small and medium-sized enterprises and developers use the Tongyi Open Source Model through the open source community, and currently the cumulative download volume of the Tongyi Open Source Model has exceeded 7 million. As of March 31, 2024, the largest AI open-source model community in China, MoDa, has focused on over 3800 artificial intelligence models.
Some institutions have pointed out that Alibaba is expected to replicate the success of Microsoft and Amazon in China, and stated that investors have recognized Alibaba's development prospects in "cloud+AI", and Tongyi Big Model is a leader in China's big models.
"Alibaba will always focus on the future." In a letter to shareholders, Alibaba stated, "In the next 10 years, we will see ourselves as a startup, adhere to the mission of 'making the world no difficult business', and continue to innovate with the spirit of entrepreneurship. We will uphold long-term principles, make choices for today, and invest for tomorrow."