Alibaba jumps as Macquarie and Jefferies up price targets on AI cloud demand
Alibaba is up about 4% this morning after Macquarie analyst Ellie Jiang raised her price target on the stock to a Street high of $235.60, up from $177.90, and Jefferies analyst Thomas Chong upped his price target to $230 from $178, based on a strong cloud outlook and synergies in its rapid-delivery model of e-commerce. The duo is among a string of analysts lately, including those at Morgan Stanley, Baird, and Bank of America, to raise their price targets on the stock.
The Jefferies analyst cited the company’s “remarkable progress made in multiple areas,” including foundation models, AI infrastructure, and agents. Alibaba also jumped up last week on news of an AI spending hike, a new model launch, and a partnership with Nvidia.
Separately, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Lea and Jasmine Lyu highlighted the e-commerce and cloud giant as a key beneficiary of Huawei’s reported plan to double output of its top AI chip next year.
“The doubling of production of Huawei’s marque AI accelerator chip in 2026 could help ease the semiconductor bottleneck at Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu,” they wrote.
