SHARES in China’s e-commerce titan Alibaba tanked more than 7% at the Hong Kong open today after it said was cancelling the spin-off of its cloud computing arm because of US curbs on exports of advanced chips.

The firm’s stock dived 7.13% soon after the starting bell, tracking a collapse in its New York-listed shares.

Alibaba said in March it planned to split the vast group into six distinct entities that would be able to separately pursue funding through public listings.

But yesterday’s announcement means its Cloud Intelligence arm will not be split off in light of “the recent expansion of US restrictions on export of advanced computing chips”.

Washington has moved to bar the shipment to China of powerful chips, including those from California-based Nvidia, which are crucial to the development of artificial intelligence. – AFP, November 17, 2023.