Alibaba History

Earlier company descriptions, brand line-ups, store counts and photographs from the history of Alibaba, kept for historical reference.

Historical reference: This page keeps earlier information about Alibaba for historical reference. The descriptions, brand line-ups and figures below reflect the periods in which they were published and may no longer describe the company today. For the company as it stands now, see the current Alibaba company profile.
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The Company Description of Its Time

Alibaba sits in a fashion company directory for a practical reason: Alibaba.com is where a large share of the world's small clothing businesses find each other. The historical profile states the founding directly - Alibaba Group was founded in 1999 by 18 people led by Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China. The founders started their company to champion small businesses, in the belief that the Internet would level the playing field by enabling small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and compete more effectively in the domestic and global economies.

The Timeline

In December 1998, Jack Ma and 17 other founders released their first online marketplace, named 'Alibaba Online'. From 1999 to 2000, Alibaba Group raised a total of US$25 million from SoftBank, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and some other institutions. In May 2003, Taobao was founded as a consumer e-commerce platform. In December 2004, Alipay, which started as a service on the Taobao platform, became a separate business. In October 2005, Alibaba Group took over the operation of China Yahoo! as part of its strategic partnership with Yahoo! Inc., and in November 2007, Alibaba.com successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

In April 2008 Taobao established Taobao Mall (Tmall.com); in September 2008 the Alibaba Group R&D Institute was established; in September 2009 Alibaba Cloud Computing was founded at the group's 10-year anniversary; and in June 2011 Taobao was reorganized into three separate companies: Taobao Marketplace, Taobao Mall and eTao. On 6 May 2014 Alibaba Group filed registration documents to go public in the U.S., and on 19 September 2014 Alibaba's shares (BABA) began trading on the NYSE. In February 2015 the group acquired a $590m minority stake in the Chinese smartphone maker Meizu. The original is explicit that this is only a portion of the company's accomplishments and history.

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References & Further Reading

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Company details such as leadership, ownership, store counts and web addresses can change. For the most current information, please check the company's official website.