Alibaba stock nudges north as AI executive departs company
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Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) shares got a mild lift Wednesday, and edged into positive territory even as one of company's top artificial intelligence executives left the Chinese Internet giant.
Jia Yangqing, who headed up the computing platform department for Alibaba's (BABA) cloud computing services business, has departed the company to start up his own AI firm. Yangqing had previously served in AI positions at Google (GOOG) and Facebook (META) before joining Alibaba (BABA) in 2019.

According to the South China Morning Post, Yangqing made his departure from Alibaba (BABA) known on a public WeChat post. While Yangqing didn't give many details about his future plans, he is reportedly headed to a start-up that will focus on AI infrastructure technology.
Yangqing's departure comes as Alibaba (BABA) has said it is developing AI technology similar to the ChatGPT chatbot created by OpenAI.
Wall Street analysts currently have a consensus strong buy rating on Alibaba's (BABA) stock, while Seeking Alpha authors give the company's shares a rating of buy. Seeking Alpha's Quant System, which historically outperforms the stock market, gives Alibaba shares a more-conservative hold rating.