Alibaba Vows ‘Historic’ Investment in Taobao and Content

  • Company’s restructuring is giving each unit more autonomy
  • Taobao chief Trudy Dai promised to not hold back on spending

The mascot for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Taobao e-commerce platform in Hangzhou, China.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s e-commerce division will make “huge” investments in its Taobao shopping app, as the newly created arm seeks to ward off competition from social media platforms.

The subsidiary aims to focus on content creation as a conduit to bring in more users and will also launch artificial intelligence-powered tools for merchants, said Trudy Dai, chief executive officer of the Taobao Tmall Commerce Group.