HONG KONG: Shares in China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba tanked more than 7% at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday after the company said it was cancelling the spinoff of its cloud computing arm because of US restrictions on exports of advanced chips.
The firm’s stock dived 7.13% soon after the starting bell, tracking a collapse in its New York-listed shares, according to AFP.
Alibaba’s plan to split
Alibaba said in March it planned to split the vast group into 6 distinct entities that would be able to separately pursue funding through public listings.
But Thursday’s announcement means its Cloud Intelligence arm will not be split off in light of the recent expansion of United States’ curbs on export of advanced computing chips.
Washington has moved to ban the shipment to China of powerful chips, including those from California-based Nvidia, which are crucial to the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
