Alibaba shares defy major AI scandal as Wall Street bites

Alibaba Group Holding (BABA) stock surged in premarket trading on Wednesday after a wave of good news landed at once.

Just days earlier, Alibaba and Anthropic were trading accusations, not compliments, in a dispute over stolen AI technology and hidden tracking code.

The rally proves those two storylines can run side by side, one bruising and one bullish, with neither resolved.

Related: Alibaba’s Anthropic ban hides bigger AI shift

Alibaba and Anthropic’s feud escalates

Alibaba banned employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code for work starting July 10, according to CNBC.

The company placed the coding tool on a high-risk software list after developers found code capable of detecting whether a user was based in China.

The ban follows a separate accusation. Anthropic told the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that operators linked to Alibaba’s Qwen lab ran roughly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to extract Claude’s capabilities through “distillation,” Reuters reported.

Distillation trains a cheaper model on a stronger one’s outputs, and Anthropic called this the largest attempt of its kind.

Alibaba told staff to switch to its own coding platform, Qoder, instead of Claude Code. As TheStreet has noted, the fight is really about who owns the developer relationship, not just which tool carries more risk.

That context matters for reading the recent rally in its stock. Alibaba is absorbing a real reputational hit from a major U.S. AI lab even as its stock climbs on unrelated news.

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A cloud market share report adds fuel

Alibaba Cloud held a 40.1% share of China’s full-stack AI cloud market, ahead of Baidu, ByteDance’s Volcano Engine, and SenseTime combined, according to a Seeking Alpha report citing Frost & Sullivan data.

That figure gave investors a reason to look past the Anthropic dispute and focus on Alibaba’s underlying AI business instead.

A separate court ruling added to the momentum.

A federal judge paused a Pentagon rule that had stripped Alibaba of its Washington lobbyists over an alleged military link, according to Bloomberg.

The reprieve does not resolve the underlying case, but it restores Alibaba’s access to policy channels while the fight continues.

Supporting context on that legal dispute:

• The Pentagon’s list of alleged Chinese military companies grew to 188 firms in June, up from roughly 130, according to Fortune.
• Baidu and BYD were added to the same list and are contesting their inclusion.
• A hearing on Alibaba’s underlying challenge will determine how long the reprieve lasts, according to Fortune.

The rally only dents a rough year

BABA shares traded above $108 on July 8, up from a previous close near $98, marking a one-day move of roughly 10%.

Alibaba runs China’s largest e-commerce and cloud computing businesses, and its stock often trades as a proxy for investor sentiment toward Chinese tech broadly.

The shares entered the Wednesday session down more than 30% for the year. However, the significant rally helped the stock recoup some of those losses, according to data tracked by TheStreet.

More AI:

• The new Chinese AI model rattling U.S. tech investors
• Anthropic restores access to Mythos 5 for select organizations
• SoftBank CEO offers stinging critique of Musk’s AI bet

Alibaba's share price has been squeezed by regulatory pressure, heavy AI infrastructure spending, and now a public dispute with one of the most restrictive AI labs on Chinese access.

Some of Wednesday’s gain also traces back to Alibaba’s own numbers. Losses in its instant-delivery business narrowed significantly in the June quarter, easing concern about spending ahead of the company’s August 28 earnings report, according to a Seeking Alpha report.

The bigger story is decoupling

Alibaba’s surge reflects a larger pattern than a single earnings quarter or a single court order. American AI labs are tightening access to their models, and Chinese companies are responding by building substitutes rather than negotiating around the restrictions.

Qoder, not Claude Code, is now the standard at one of China’s largest tech employers.

That kind of substitution is happening firm by firm across China’s tech sector, independent of what Alibaba’s stock does in any given week.

Investors chasing the rally are betting that Alibaba’s cloud numbers will hold up. The more durable question is how many more Chinese companies follow Alibaba away from American AI tools before that shift becomes permanent.

Related: The secret letter triggering a U.S.-China AI showdown