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Alibaba Group BABA and JD.com JD are two of China’s largest e-commerce players, each playing a critical role in shaping the country’s digital economy. While Alibaba has expanded into cloud, AI, and international markets, JD.com continues to build on its strength in supply chain and core retail. Both companies are also tapping into new growth areas like food delivery and instant commerce to stay ahead in a competitive landscape.
With China's economy gradually stabilizing and digital consumption rebounding, investors are watching closely to see which platform offers stronger, more sustainable growth. Let’s break down their latest earnings and strategies to find out which stock has the greater upside potential.
The Case for BABA Stock
Alibaba has been benefiting from its continued pivot toward AI, international e-commerce and retail. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the company reported $32.81 billion in revenues, up 6.96% year over year. The Taobao and Tmall Group has been steadily improving monetization through the rollout of a 0.6% software fee and BABA’s AI-powered digital marketing tool Quanzhantui, which has helped drive a 12% rise in customer management revenues.
The company’s loyalty base has also expanded, with 88VIP members surpassing 50 million, supporting higher user retention. 88VIP is Alibaba’s premium paid membership program through which members can enjoy exclusive benefits across the company’s ecosystem.
Alibaba’s international commerce segment has been growing rapidly, up 22% year over year in the last reported quarter, as the company continues to localize supply chains and refine models like AliExpress Choice, which have been improving unit economics and narrowing losses.
The company has also been seeing strong results from its investments in AI developments. Alibaba Cloud revenues rose 18%, with AI product revenues continuing triple-digit year-over-year growth for the seventh straight quarter. Its open-sourced Qwen3 AI model family, launched in April, had been downloaded more than 300 million times by April end, driving adoption across multiple industries.
BABA has been expanding its instant commerce push with a RMB 10 billion investment into Taobao Shango and Ele.me, which has already shown promising early results in user engagement and efficiency.
Overall, Alibaba has been streamlining its focus by exiting non-core assets like Sun Art and Intime, and redirecting capital into scalable segments.
The Case for JD Stock
JD.com has been benefiting from its focus on supply chain strength, price competitiveness and retail expansion into lower-tier markets. In the first quarter of 2025, JD reported $41.79 billion in revenues, up 16.01% year over year, supported by continued growth in core retail. Electronics and home appliances rose 17%, and general merchandise grew 15%, with supermarket and fashion categories maintaining double-digit growth for five consecutive quarters.
User engagement has been rising steadily. JD has been enhancing shopping frequency and ARPU through AI-powered recommendations, better after-sales services, and personalized delivery features. The company reported more than 20% year-over-year growth in active customers in the last reported quarter.
JD’s 3P marketplace has been expanding with more merchants and SKUs, especially in value-driven markets. This has been driving 16% year-over-year growth in marketing and marketplace revenues, with the low-price strategy resonating across lower-tier cities.
JD has also been aggressively expanding into food delivery, nearing 20 million daily orders. It has been onboarding merchants at zero commission, offering full rider insurance, and leveraging its retail infrastructure for scale. These efforts have been helping build cross-platform user engagement.
JD Logistics has been contributing with 11% revenue growth, driven by continued automation in warehousing and last-mile delivery. The company’s gross profit rose 20%, and non-GAAP net income surged 43% year over year to RMB 12.8 billion, highlighting strong margin discipline.
JD has also been investing in AI ad automation, expanding Jingxi in rural areas and and enhancing user operations to drive long-term growth through improved platform efficiency and stronger user engagement.