Morgan Stanley: Alibaba Qianwen has the advantage of becoming a super app

Morgan Stanley published a report stating that Alibaba (09988.HK) launched Qianwen two months ago, and it has already surpassed 100 million monthly active users, fully integrating into Alibaba's ecosystem. The firm expects that this year, 2C (consumer-facing) applications and Agentic AI will become the core focus in the AI field, while recent internet platforms such as ByteDance and Tencent (00700.HK) are also actively accelerating the launch of 2C products.

The firm indicated that with Alibaba's vast ecosystem, including Taobao/Ele.me, Fliggy, Amap, and Alipay, Qianwen has a strong advantage to become an all-in-one AI superapp and life assistant. Tencent is rapidly catching up in AI model capabilities, but the official launch of its agentic products may be slightly delayed.

Morgan Stanley anticipates that the growth of Qianwen's daily active users, along with further enhancements in agent capabilities in future iterations, will become another important driver for the stock price, while growth in cloud business revenue remains the main driver. However, increased marketing expenses to promote 2C user adoption may lead to a wider loss in other full business areas. Morgan Stanley maintains an "Overweight" rating on Alibaba (BABA.US) with a target price of $180