Cai Chongxin confirms that Alibaba Group Holding Limited Sponsored ADR (09988) will collaborate with Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) to provide AI functions for Chinese users.

According to media reports, at the World Governments Summit 2025 held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Alibaba Group Holding Limited Sponsored ADR co-founder and chairman Jack Ma responded to the rumors of cooperation between Alibaba and Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), saying that Apple Inc. needs a local partner in China for their mobile services. Apple Inc. has been very selective and has held talks with many companies in China. "In the end, Apple Inc. chose to do business with us. We are very fortunate and honored to be able to do business with such a great company like Apple Inc.," said Jack Ma. It was reported earlier that Apple Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Limited Sponsored ADR will collaborate to develop Apple Intelligence features for Chinese iPhone users, and have submitted the jointly developed AI services for approval to the Cyberspace Administration of China, hoping to meet the authorities' requirements. This move by Apple Inc. is to address the declining sales in China by providing more attractive software features to revive the weakening iPhone sales in the Chinese market. It is known that initially in 2023, Apple Inc. preferred Baidu Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A as a partner, but due to their model not meeting the requirements, they did not proceed. They then considered models from Tencent, ByteDance, DeepSeek, and Alibaba. The reason for not choosing DeepSeek was because this startup lacked the manpower and experience to support Apple Inc.'s large customer base. Choosing Alibaba was based on its vast consumer data resources.