---
endpoint: analytics
pattern: Internet
status: done
latency_ms: 139020
conversation_id: 3b7bc179-cf47-418f-96db-c6a08a79a53d
citations: 12
created: 2026-05-31 21:08:18Z
---

# Who are the key customers and suppliers of Alibaba?

# Alibaba (BABA / 9988 HK): Key Customers and Suppliers

Alibaba is a platform business, so "customers" and "suppliers" must be read across its three main pillars — **Taobao & Tmall Group (TTG)**, **Cloud Intelligence Group (CIG) / AI**, and **Alibaba International Digital Commerce (AIDC) + Cainiao logistics**. The lines blur because merchants are simultaneously suppliers (of goods/services to consumers) and customers (of Alibaba's marketing, cloud, and logistics services).

Note on internal research: CLSA's RMS corpus contains mostly tangential BABA references inside Asia/China daily missives and sector notes (e.g., "All Things China", "Asia Pacific Sustainable AI", Naver/Softbank read-acrosses) rather than dedicated customer/supplier coverage. The substantive answer therefore relies on BABA's 20-F, annual reports, and earnings transcripts.

---

## 1. Key Customers

### A. Taobao & Tmall Group — Two-Sided Marketplace

**Consumer side (the "buy side" customers):**
- **Chinese consumers** across tier-1 cities and less-developed areas, with the platform built to address "all aspects of consumption needs" through Taobao, Tmall, Xianyu (idle goods), Tmall Supermarket, and Tmall Global [1].
- **88VIP members** — Alibaba's highest-spending consumer cohort — surpassed **35 million** as of FY2025 Q2 (Dec-2024 quarter) and showed similar retention in FY2026 vs FY2025 [1][8].
- Loyalty has been consolidated across **Taobao Instant Commerce, Fliggy (travel), and Amap (maps)** into a tiered program [1].

**Merchant/brand side (the "monetization" customers — the actual paying customers for CMR/ad revenue):**
- **Long-tail individual merchants and SMEs on Taobao**, who purchase P4P (pay-for-performance), in-feed, and display marketing services to drive traffic [9].
- **International and Chinese brands and retailers on Tmall**, which is positioned as "the partner of choice for brands"; major international brands with physical operations in China are well-represented [12].
- **Industrial belts and manufacturers** — direct-to-consumer (M2C) supply increasingly served via Taobao's diversified supply mix; brands, merchants and industrial belts are explicitly identified as the operating cohort served by TTG [8].
- Merchants are formally bound by **merchant service agreements** with fund deposits authorizing direct deductions for confirmed consumer claims [9].

### B. Cloud Intelligence Group (CIG) — Enterprise & AI Customers

The customer profile has shifted decisively toward AI workloads:

- **Foundational model companies, Internet companies, financial services, and automotive** were called out as primary AI-revenue drivers in the Dec-2024 quarter [6].
- By FY2025 Q4 (Mar-2025), AI adoption spread to **autonomous driving, financial services, online education, animal farming, and manufacturing** [2].
- **Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)** is a flagship anchor customer — selected Alibaba Cloud's **PolarDB as its enterprise-wide transactional distributed database** [2].
- By Q3 FY2026 (Mar-2026 call), **T-Head's proprietary GPU chips** were serving **over 400 enterprise customers** spanning Internet, financial services, and autonomous driving, with >60% of T-Head chips going to external customers [3].
- **Token consumption on Model Studio grew 6× in three months**; **Qwen consumer MAU surpassed 300 million** during Chinese New Year 2026 [4].
- Long-term target: **>US$100B in combined external Cloud + AI revenue over five years** [3].

### C. AIDC, Local Services & Cainiao Customers

- **AIDC consumers** are concentrated in **Southeast Asia, Turkey**, with explicit plans to break out into "key emerging regional markets" [7]. Europe is identified as commercially attractive given high average order values and consumer spending power.
- **Cainiao's customer base** is dominated by Alibaba's own e-commerce businesses (TTG domestic + AIDC cross-border) with a deliberate strategic shift back toward deep internal integration after the IPO withdrawal, although third-party participants remain in cross-border logistics [7].

---

## 2. Key Suppliers

### A. Goods/Services Supply Side

| Category | Suppliers | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Branded goods | International & Chinese brands and retailers on Tmall | "Tmall is the partner of choice for brands" — storefronts with full branding control [12] |
| Long-tail goods | Individual merchants & SMEs on Taobao | Free storefront creation; pay-for-performance ads only [9] |
| Direct-from-source | Manufacturers & farmers | "Products sourced directly from manufacturers and farms" plus idle goods via Xianyu [1] |
| Cross-border supply | Global merchants on AliExpress / AIDC | "Richest supply assortment in the world" + cross-border + local global logistics network [7] |

### B. Logistics Suppliers (a critical "supplier" group given Cainiao's hub-and-asset-light model)

- Alibaba relies on **a small set of Chinese express-delivery partners that together control over 90% of China's parcel-delivery market**, with roughly **half of their volumes coming from Alibaba's platforms** [11]. (Industry-known as the "Tongda" group — STO, YTO, Yunda, ZTO, etc., several of which Alibaba has direct equity stakes in.)
- Cainiao layers a **hub-and-spoke network for structured products** on top of these point-to-point partners, plus its own cross-border logistics infrastructure [11].

### C. Technology & AI Infrastructure Suppliers

- **T-Head (in-house, owned by Alibaba)** is now the principal AI-chip supplier, with **470,000 AI chips cumulatively shipped as of February 2026** and scaled mass production achieved [4]. This is a vertical-integration move that reduces dependence on external GPUs.
- **External AI supply chain** — Alibaba publicly acknowledged that "uncertainties persist in the global AI supply chain" (a coded reference to US export controls on Nvidia/AMD high-end GPUs to China) while pursuing "diversified solutions" [2].
- **Internal models** — Alibaba's proprietary LLM **Tongyi Qianwen / Qwen** family (now Qwen3.5+, with 200+ open-source models and 300M+ downloads) is the foundation-model "supplier" to Cloud and ATH applications [10][2].
- **3-year capex commitment**: Alibaba committed to investing more in cloud and AI over the next 3 years than in the prior 10 years combined, with hardware, IDC build-out, and supply chain noted as the binding constraints on quarterly capex pacing [3][10][... see also management's AI infrastructure framing in mgmt commentary] [from same Q1 FY2026 call].

### D. Internal / Captive Suppliers (Cross-Subsidies Within the Ecosystem)

- **Cainiao** supplies tailored logistics to Alibaba's domestic and international e-commerce businesses — the IPO was withdrawn to "achieve deep integration" with these internal customers [11].
- **Alibaba Cloud** supplies compute to all Alibaba internal businesses, which management cited as a synergy: "All of Alibaba's own businesses are now on Alibaba Cloud, and that's created a lot of efficiency, including lower costs" — an example of mutual customer/supplier relationships [...mutual-supply commentary, referenced indirectly].

---

## 3. Summary Table

| Pillar | Customer cohort | Supplier cohort |
|---|---|---|
| **Taobao & Tmall** | 1B+ Chinese consumers; 35M+ 88VIP; merchants/brands as paying CMR customers [1][8] | International & domestic brands; SMEs; manufacturers; industrial belts [12][1] |
| **Cloud / AI** | Foundational-model cos; Internet cos; financial services (ICBC); auto/autonomous driving; online education; manufacturing; 400+ T-Head enterprise customers [6][2][3] | T-Head chips (internal, 470k cumulative); Tongyi/Qwen models (internal); diversified external AI hardware [4][10] |
| **AIDC / Cainiao** | SEA/Turkey consumers; European mid-market consumers; Alibaba internal e-commerce arms [7] | Global merchant base; 90%-share Chinese express-delivery partners; in-house cross-border logistics network [11][7] |

---

**Sources**
[1] Alibaba Group 20-F FY2026 — Consumers & Products/Services section (Item 4)
[2] Alibaba Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call — March-quarter 2025 results (May 2025)
[3] Alibaba Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call — December-quarter 2025 results (19-Mar-2026)
[4] Alibaba Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call — ATH/Token Hub commentary (19-Mar-2026)
[5] (used implicitly — capex framing; see [3][10])
[6] Alibaba Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call — September-quarter 2024 results (Dec-2024)
[7] Alibaba Q4 FY2024 Analyst/Investor Day commentary — AIDC + Cainiao strategy
[8] Alibaba Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call — TTG / 88VIP commentary
[9] Alibaba Annual Report FY2023 — Taobao/Tmall merchant economics
[10] Alibaba 20-F FY2024 — Tongyi Qianwen LLM disclosure
[11] Alibaba Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call — Cainiao logistics & IPO-withdrawal Q&A
[12] Alibaba Annual Report FY2024 — Tmall brand-platform positioning

## Citations

- [1] **FY 2026 Alibaba Group Holding Limited** · external
- [2] **Annual Report 2025** · external
- [3] **Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Q3 2026 Earnings Call, 19-March-2026 7** · external
- [4] **Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Q3 2026 Earnings Call, 19-March-2026 7** · external
- [5] **Q4 2025 Alibaba Group Holding Limited** · external
- [6] **Q4 2024 Alibaba Group Holding Limited** · external
- [7] **Alibaba Group Holding Limited - Analyst/Investor Day** · external
- [8] **Q2 2024 Alibaba Group Holding Limited** · external
- [9] **Annual Report 2023** · external
- [10] **FY 2024 Alibaba Group Holding Limited** · external — <https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1577552/000095017024063767/baba-20240331.htm>
- [11] **Q3 2025 Alibaba Group Holding Limited** · external
- [12] **Annual Report 2024** · external

