Alibaba was founded in Hangzhou in 1999 by Jack Ma and 17 other co-founders.
The original business was Alibaba.com, a business-to-business marketplace intended to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. The company began in Ma's apartment and later expanded into consumer commerce, payments, cloud computing, logistics, and digital media.
Alibaba's best-known consumer marketplace in China is Taobao, launched in 2003. The group also created Alipay, which later became Ant Group. These businesses are related but are not the same legal company, a distinction that is often missed in simplified accounts of Alibaba's history.
Alibaba completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. At the time, it raised about US$25 billion, making it the largest IPO in history at that point. Jack Ma was the company's founding chairman.