Alibaba quarterly profit drops 75% as AI investment spending grows

China’s technology giant Alibaba on Thursday reported a 75 per cent drop in profit for the latest quarter as it invested big in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, even as revenue coming from its AI-related services gained 45 per cent. The Hong Kong- and United States-listed company, which started out in e-commerce and online retail but is increasingly focused on AI technologies, said that its profit for April-June was at 10.5 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion), down from 43.1 billion yuan (US$6.4 billion) the same quarter last year.