--- description: Find out why Alibaba Group was selected for TIME‘s list of the most influential companies of 2026. title: TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2026: Alibaba Group image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5ffa373faf330566/69de94d24c8306c49da3b464/time100-companies-2026-alibaba-group.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Apr 30, 2026 # Alibaba Group Reshaping more than retail by [Tharin Pillay](/author/tharin-pillay/) ## Tharin Pillay Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.  Courtesy Alibaba Group In less than three years, Chinese tech giant Alibaba has become a dominant force in open-source AI. Its Qwen series has surpassed 1 billion cumulative downloads and spawned more than 200,000 derivative models, making it the world’s most popular open-source model family. Its appeal reaches well beyond China. [Airbnb](https://winbuzzer.com/2026/03/31/alibaba-qwen35-omni-closed-source-multimodal-ai-xcxwbn/ "undefined") has said it relies heavily on Qwen for its AI customer-service agent, citing the quality and low cost, and [Pinterest](https://fortune.com/2026/03/17/why-pinterest-is-going-all-in-on-open-source-ai/ "undefined") uses Qwen to analyze visual content and generate contextual text for pins. Alibaba is now trying to turn its open-model lead into a full-stack AI empire. The company is scaling its already expansive cloud computing infrastructure, making its own AI chips and consumer applications, and selling agentic, hosted versions of its models to enterprise clients. "Over the next five years, our goal is to surpass $100 billion in combined cloud and AI external revenue," CEO Eddie Wu told analysts on a recent earnings call. Alibaba Group: 2026 TIME100 Most Influential Companies ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/alibaba-group/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/alibaba-group/"},"headline":"Alibaba Group","datePublished":"2026-04-30T13:22:44.009Z","dateModified":"2026-05-12T07:03:06.766Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/alibaba-group/","keywords":["TIME100 Companies","franchise","list"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5ffa373faf330566/69de94d24c8306c49da3b464/time100-companies-2026-alibaba-group.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tharin Pillay","jobTitle":"Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/tharin-pillay/"}],"creator":"Tharin Pillay","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5ffa373faf330566/69de94d24c8306c49da3b464/time100-companies-2026-alibaba-group.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":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/alibaba-group/","name":"Alibaba Group"}}]}] ```