Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jack Ma launched Alibaba Group on the 28th of June 1999 from a small apartment in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The company started as a business-to-business marketplace for Chinese enterprises and secured US$25 million in investment by October of that year.
Alibaba raised US$25 billion through its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on the 19th of September 2014. This event created the largest initial public offering in world history with a market value of US$231 billion at the time.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally scuttled the Ant Group IPO in November 2020 to consolidate control over finance and technology sectors. Following this suspension, Alibaba lost nearly all of its stock-market gains in 2020, dropping from $859 billion to $586 billion by December.
Alibaba operates Taobao Marketplace, Tmall.com, Cainiao Smart Logistics Network, and Alipay as core components of its business structure. These units collectively form an integrated ecosystem supporting e-commerce, retail, media, and financial services across China and globally.
Alibaba Cloud launched in September 2009 during the company's tenth anniversary celebration. On the 27th of July 2019, they unveiled the XuanTie-910 processor, a 64-bit RISC-V chip designed by T-Head that runs at 2.5 GHz.
The New York Times reported in December 2020 that Alibaba had developed facial recognition software configured to detect Uyghur faces and other ethnic minorities in China. The company admitted dismay over how Alibaba Cloud subsidiary used the feature while refusing to provide proof it was merely a test or trial.