Jack Ma. Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images
LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Alibaba founder Jack Ma says that his company—the Chinese ecommerce giant that recently debuted on Wall Street—is set to expand its investments in the U.S. tech market.
“We’ve invested a lot in this space and we’re going to invest more,” Ma said on Monday evening at the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJD conference in Laguna Beach, California, referring Alibaba’s recent launch of a stateside ecommerce site called 11 Main. “If I come to USA, I want to thank USA. I got my inspirations from Silicon Valley…It’s our time to come here and invest in Silicon Valley.”
With its $25-billion debut on the New York Stock Exchange this past September, Alibaba became one of the most valuable tech companies on the planet, and Ma took his place as China’s richest person—at least on paper. With services such as the Amazon-esque Tmall, the eBay-like Taobao, the online payments service Alipay, and the wholesale business-to-business commerce site Alibaba.com, the company dominates ecommerce in China—the fastest growing ecommerce market in the world—but Ma and company are aiming for more.
Alibaba has already invested in a wide range U.S. tech startups. Earlier this year, it launched a “beta” test version of a 11 Main. And on Monday, Ma indicated the company will continue to make similar investments stateside. “It’s just a start,” Ma said of 11 Main.
Part of his aim, he said, is to help U.S. companies play a greater role in the Chinese market. “How can I sell more American small business products to China?” he said.
As he interviewed Ma on an outdoor stage at a Laguna Beach resort, Wall Street Journal editor Dennis Berman asked Ma if he’s interested in acquiring eBay or PayPal, and Ma demurred. But when Berman asked whether Alibaba would somehow dovetail its Alipay online payments service with Apple Pay, the new payments service from Tim Cook and company, Ma said he was “very interested” in such a partnership.
Apparently. Apple CEO Tim Cook feels much the same way. Following the interview with Ma, Cook took the stage, and he indicated that Apple and Alibaba would be discussing a partnership in the coming week.
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