Alibaba named most admired Chinese internet firm by Fortune amid race with DeepSeek

The e-commerce giant trails only Amazon and Alphabet in the internet service and retailing category

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Alibaba’s office in Nanjing, eastern Jiangsu province. Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Published: 12:00pm, 2 Feb 2025

Alibaba Group Holding has been named the world’s most admired Chinese internet and retail company, according to the latest rankings by US business magazine Fortune, as the technology giant unveils an artificial intelligence (AI) model aimed at competing with China’s hottest start-up, DeepSeek.

The Hangzhou-based company, owner of the South China Morning Post, came third in the internet service and retailing category on Fortune’s 2025 list of the World’s Most Admired Companies, trailing only US rivals Amazon.com and Alphabet. It climbed five spots from eighth place last year.

However, Alibaba did not make it into the top 50 in the overall rankings, which were led by Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Berkshire Hathaway.

Alibaba is among a growing list of Chinese companies heavily investing in AI models. Last week, the company’s cloud computing and AI arm, Alibaba Cloud, released an upgraded version of its Qwen model, the Qwen 2.5-Max, which it claimed to have “comprehensively outperformed” the V3 model launched in December by Chinese start-up DeepSeek that has drawn comparison to advanced products from OpenAI.

Alibaba Cloud said its Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms DeepSeek’s V3 model. Photo: AP Photo

DeepSeek has drawn worldwide attention for its new open-source reasoning model, R1, which the company said had achieved capabilities comparable to OpenAI’s closed-source GPT models in some areas at a fraction of the usual cost.