Brothers.
Last night I looked at Alibaba’s earnings report—Alibaba Cloud already has cash flow now!
AI cloud revenue surged 45%, and profits more than doubled (133%).
What does that mean? It means that the “AI infrastructure mega-maniac” persona they hammered out at the time, spending everything they had, is finally starting to replenish with real cash.
Everyone’s been training models and running inference with their full effort—money in your pocket is truly flowing into Alibaba’s servers.
This is what we call “cloud-raising AI,” and the opening is at least going okay.
But don’t get too excited yet.
Turn and look at the bill next door—you can almost feel your soul leave your body.
The AI application layer—those smart agents we can actually touch and see—lost 13.8 billion yuan in a single quarter.
On one side, Cloud has just had the life support pulled and is getting back on its feet.
On the other side, the AI application here, the money-sucking monster, is still scattering cash in the operating room.
This playbook is way too familiar.
A classic “left hand pays the right hand”—Cloud busting its back to move bricks and earn some blood-and-sweat profits, then turns around and feeds it all into the model-building crew on the right.
If you want to put it nicely, it’s called strategic investment. Plainly speaking, though: big brother hasn’t stopped being weaned—second brother is just working his ass off to support him.
So the question is: is this closed loop really stable?
The key is next quarter.
If the growth rate of Cloud’s profits slows down, and the burn rate on the AI side can’t be controlled, then the market will start to murmur: is your “cloud-raising AI” story, maybe, no longer going to hold up?
By then, you might not even be able to drink the soup—let alone feast on the meat.
So don’t rush to ask, “When will it climb out of the pit?”
It’s like planting a fruit tree. You dig the hole, bury the soil, water it—and in the first few years you only see money getting poured in.
But if you’re truly sure the fruits it yields will sell for big money, then you have to be patient and wait for it to take root.
Alibaba’s AI applications are still entangled underground, three meters deep.
As for when it can break through the soil?
No need to guess—when it finally blossoms and bears fruit for real, the market will answer on its own.
With Alibaba’s brothers in hand, this pit still has to be endured—but at least the light at the bottom of the pit seems to have brightened a tiny bit.$BABAB
Last night I looked at Alibaba’s earnings report—Alibaba Cloud already has cash flow now!
AI cloud revenue surged 45%, and profits more than doubled (133%).
What does that mean? It means that the “AI infrastructure mega-maniac” persona they hammered out at the time, spending everything they had, is finally starting to replenish with real cash.
Everyone’s been training models and running inference with their full effort—money in your pocket is truly flowing into Alibaba’s servers.
This is what we call “cloud-raising AI,” and the opening is at least going okay.
But don’t get too excited yet.
Turn and look at the bill next door—you can almost feel your soul leave your body.
The AI application layer—those smart agents we can actually touch and see—lost 13.8 billion yuan in a single quarter.
On one side, Cloud has just had the life support pulled and is getting back on its feet.
On the other side, the AI application here, the money-sucking monster, is still scattering cash in the operating room.
This playbook is way too familiar.
A classic “left hand pays the right hand”—Cloud busting its back to move bricks and earn some blood-and-sweat profits, then turns around and feeds it all into the model-building crew on the right.
If you want to put it nicely, it’s called strategic investment. Plainly speaking, though: big brother hasn’t stopped being weaned—second brother is just working his ass off to support him.
So the question is: is this closed loop really stable?
The key is next quarter.
If the growth rate of Cloud’s profits slows down, and the burn rate on the AI side can’t be controlled, then the market will start to murmur: is your “cloud-raising AI” story, maybe, no longer going to hold up?
By then, you might not even be able to drink the soup—let alone feast on the meat.
So don’t rush to ask, “When will it climb out of the pit?”
It’s like planting a fruit tree. You dig the hole, bury the soil, water it—and in the first few years you only see money getting poured in.
But if you’re truly sure the fruits it yields will sell for big money, then you have to be patient and wait for it to take root.
Alibaba’s AI applications are still entangled underground, three meters deep.
As for when it can break through the soil?
No need to guess—when it finally blossoms and bears fruit for real, the market will answer on its own.
With Alibaba’s brothers in hand, this pit still has to be endured—but at least the light at the bottom of the pit seems to have brightened a tiny bit.$BABAB