Since retreating from the spotlight at the height of a government-led industry crackdown, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma seeded a small company to process and sell farming produce in his latest venture. The entrepreneur set up “Hangzhou Ma’s Kitchen Food” last week with an initial registered capital of 10 million yuan ($1.4 million), according to corporate database Tianyancha.
Ma’s whereabouts and activities have been a topic of intense speculation since 2020 when he stepped aside from Alibaba’s day-to-day operations and devoted his time to agricultural pursuits through his foundation. His new investment aligns with Xi Jinping’s administration, which has made elevating rural areas one of its top priorities.
In March, Ma paid a carefully arranged public visit to a school in Hangzhou that was widely viewed as a sign that he was now beginning to resume his public duties. He’s been focusing on projects in agriculture and education, two of his biggest passions.
A former English teacher, Ma founded Alibaba Group, now the world’s largest e-commerce business, in 1999. He stepped down as the company’s executive chairman in 2019 and spent about a year overseas. He returned to China in March 2023 just as Alibaba unveiled plans for a significant restructuring to split the firm into six businesses.
Ma has put off plans to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Alibaba shares after the Chinese tech giant’s stock plummeted. He’s putting off the sale of the shares because he believes the company will rebound, CNN reported this week. The billionaire was expected to sell around 10 million shares, or $871 million, but now says he won’t sell any shares.
In a Wednesday post on the Alibaba internal forum seen by CNN, Chief People Officer Jane Jiang Fang said Ma’s decision to forgo the share sale was in response to the market’s performance and the hope that Alibaba will recover. “Jack’s belief in the long-term potential of Alibaba and its mission are intact, and he wants to ensure that we can move forward with our strategic plan,” she wrote.
The post came amid a broader rethink of the company’s strategy and an announcement that the board had unanimously approved a significant reorganization. The company also revealed that it had canceled the planned spinoff of its cloud computing unit and will now focus instead on investing in its core commerce platform. Its e-commerce and cloud services businesses are growing faster than China’s economy. That has helped make them among the most valuable companies in the country. However, the slowdown in China’s economic growth has also accelerated the decline of the tech sector, and many analysts think Alibaba may suffer as a result. The company’s stock was down almost 7% in New York on Friday and nearly 10% in Hong Kong. It is trading down about 12% this year.