Jack Ma-backed Ant’s profit dives 60% after AI, global expansion

ANT Group’s quarterly profit fell 60 per cent, after the Chinese digital payments giant made more inroads overseas and invested in artificial intelligence (AI) to grow its revenue. 

The Hangzhou-based online finance company contributed 1.5 billion yuan (S$270.3 million) of profit to Alibaba Group, which owns a third of Ant. That translates to an estimated US$654.5 million in profit for the three months ended Mar 31, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Alibaba’s earnings report.

It follows a previous quarter that saw Ant’s profit fall 31 per cent year on year. The company’s reported earnings lag a quarter behind Alibaba’s. Ant declined to comment.

Ant, which operates the ubiquitous financial services app Alipay in China, has been investing in AI and other technologies. It also revamped its business model and undertook an organisational overhaul after a Chinese regulatory crackdown that followed its aborted listing in 2020.

Its Singapore-based international arm brought in US$3 billion in revenue for 2024, paving the way for a potential initial public offering (IPO) of the unit. Sentiment for China’s tech sector has also broadly improved after President Xi Jinping met in February with private entrepreneurs, including Ant co-founder Jack Ma. 

The Chinese billionaire made a rare speech at Ant’s 20th anniversary in December, discussing the company’s future and opportunities brought by AI. Ma gave up control of Ant in 2023, and no longer holds any position in the company. 

Ant International, meanwhile, is planning to apply for stablecoin licences in Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as a related permit in Luxembourg. Its businesses include connecting digital wallets in other countries, cross-border trade payments, digital lending, and providing treasury and foreign exchange services for businesses. 

On the group level, Ant has developed techniques for training AI models using Chinese-made semiconductors, which could cut costs by 20 per cent. The company used domestic chips, including from Alibaba and Huawei Technologies, to train models using the Mixture of Experts machine learning approach, achieving results similar to those from Nvidia chips.

The company also set up a unit last year to focus on humanoid robot development. And it’s launched a series of AI services, including a healthcare app and payment enhancements.

In 2023, an Ant share repurchase proposal valued the company at about US$79 billion, well off the US$280 billion it was valued at during its attempted IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong in late 2020. 

Chinese regulators torpedoed that earlier listing attempt, and Ant has been waiting for a financial holding company licence, which could help revive an IPO. The overall group would explore going public in Hong Kong first instead of a dual Shanghai-Hong Kong listing like what it tried earlier, sources said previously. BLOOMBERG