Alibaba Group is the company founded by Jack Ma that went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 under the ticker BABA.
Alibaba began in Hangzhou, China, in 1999 as a business-to-business online marketplace. Its early platform connected Chinese manufacturers with international buyers, while later services expanded into consumer shopping, cloud computing, digital payments, logistics and entertainment.
Alibaba’s September 2014 stock-market debut raised about US$25 billion, making it the largest initial public offering in history at that time. The listing made Alibaba one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies by market capitalization, although its ranking has changed as share prices and other companies’ valuations moved.
Alibaba Group is often confused with Alibaba.com, which is only one of its businesses. Its major consumer platforms include Taobao and Tmall, while Ant Group—best known for Alipay—was spun out as a separate affiliated company rather than being the same listed corporation.