Alibaba workforce shrinks 34% in 2025 as Chinese tech giant doubles down on AI Alibaba's workforce decreased by approximately 34% during 2025, as the company sold off parts of its offline retail operations and focused more on artificial intelligence. The company reported having 128,197 employees at the end of December, compared to 194,320 at the same time the previous year. The latest employee count was disclosed in an earnings report released on Thursday, which also revealed that the company's profits dropped by 67% and its revenue fell short of expectations for the final three months of 2025. Alibaba's shares in Hong Kong were down 6% on Friday. Most of the workforce reduction occurred in the March 2025 quarter, following the sale of Sun Art retail group at the end of 2024. The company also exited its stake in the department store chain Intime around the same time. Alibaba is part of a group of major tech firms that have cut staff in the past year, from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou, China. Alibaba's staff has supported its wide range of business units, including e-commerce, cloud computing, logistics, and other related services. However, the company has been reducing its workforce steadily in recent years, with the latest cuts being significantly larger than the 11% reduction in December 2024 compared to the previous year. This move comes as Alibaba seeks to divest labor-intensive assets and restructure its core businesses, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence. The tech giant aims to become a full-stack AI company, covering areas from semiconductor manufacturing to computing and AI models. Recently, Alibaba launched an agentic AI service called Wukong for businesses and increased prices for its cloud and storage services by up to 34% due to higher demand and supply chain costs.#alibaba #sun_art #intime #eddie_wu #wukong
