--- description: Find out why Alibaba was selected for the inaugural list title: TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2021: Alibaba image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9de7d1c372ad8115/698a190be76ad2379e638d13/alibaba-time100-companies-1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Apr 27, 2021 # Alibaba Coalescing e-commerce by [Charlie Campbell](/author/charlie-campbell/) ## Charlie Campbell Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large  Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, China, in March 2017. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, China, in March 2017.Tony Law—Redux Alibaba is China’s biggest e-commerce company, with $1 trillion in gross merchandise sales and $72 billion in revenue in 2020\. But forays into mobile payments—its service touts 1.3 billion global users—catapulted this Goliath into a major political stakeholder, unnerving China’s top leaders. Friction between Alibaba’s charismatic founder, [Jack Ma](https://time.com/5926062/jack-ma/ "undefined"), and the Chinese government resulted in regulators suddenly nixing the record-breaking $37 billion IPO of Alibaba’s fintech arm, Ant Group, which was subsequently ordered to restructure. In April, [Alibaba](https://time.com/tag/alibaba/ "undefined") agreed to pay a fine of $2.8 billion, imposed for breaching antimonopoly rules—a sign, according to some analysts, that both sides are looking to the future. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5950047/alibaba-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5950047/alibaba-2/"},"headline":"Alibaba","datePublished":"2021-04-27T00:53:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T23:49:32.801Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5950047/alibaba-2/","keywords":["Lists","franchise","TIME100 Companies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9de7d1c372ad8115/698a190be76ad2379e638d13/alibaba-time100-companies-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlie Campbell","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/charlie-campbell/"}],"creator":"Charlie Campbell","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9de7d1c372ad8115/698a190be76ad2379e638d13/alibaba-time100-companies-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-companies/5950047/alibaba-2/","name":"Alibaba"}}]}] ```