Alibaba employees 2015-2025

Alibaba Group Holding, China’s biggest e-commerce company, had 124,320 full-time employees as of March 2025, nearly 80,000 fewer than the previous year. The decrease in the number of employees was mainly a result of the sale of Sun Art. Alibaba is the second most valuable internet company listed in China and among the largest in terms of revenue.

What is Alibaba Group?

The company was founded in Hangzhou, China, in 1999 by a group of people led by a former English teacher, Jack Ma. It started as an online platform helping small Chinese businesses to reach global buyers. Alibaba Group went public in September 2014 and broke all records with a total IPO of 25 billion U.S. dollars. Today, the company operates a number of e-commerce, retail, internet service, and fintech-related businesses all around the world. It is best known for its Alibaba.com B2B e-commerce platform (including 1688.com and AliExpress.com segments), C2C marketplace Taobao, B2C online retail platform Tmall, and online payment platform Alipay.

Who are Alibaba’s employees?

As of the beginning of 2020, Alibaba had more employees than Yahoo and Facebook combined. The majority of them were based in China. As of 2019, over one-third of Alibaba’s senior management were female, and around 45 percent of all staff were under 30 years old. In 2023, Eddie Wu, who is one of the co-founders of the company, replaced Daniel Zhang in the role of Alibaba's CEO and executive chairman. Every year on May 10, Alibaba Group celebrates Employee Appreciation Day. All employees, also called Aliren, bring their families to the company campus for an all-day carnival.