The closure of the lab is the latest internal change at Alibaba, which surprised investors earlier this month by scrapping its plan to spin-off its cloud business

Just hours before the firm pulled its cloud unit’s listing, it had emerged Ma's family trust intended to sell 10 million American depository shares

"The shelving is a surprise and makes us wonder if there are issues behind the scenes that we aren't aware of," one analyst said, but news that Jack Ma's family trust was selling shares likely also hurt the stock

The e-commerce outfit had unveiled plans in March to list its cloud business as part of the biggest restructuring in its 24-year history

Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, ByteDance and Baidu, had placed orders worth billions for 2024 and Nvidia had planned to deliver some of them by mid-November

The logistics unit’s launch would make it the first to be split off since the Chinese e-commerce giant announced its restructure six months ago

Eddie Wu, a long-time lieutenant of former Alibaba chief Jack Ma, takes charge of the company amid its biggest organisational restructure of its 24-year history

The cloud unit is Alibaba's second-biggest money spinner, valued at $41 billion to $60 billion ahead of an IPO planned for next year

The Chinese e-commerce outfit recorded first-quarter revenue of $32.29 billion despite fears growing for the country’s stuttering recovery

Once an illustrious Chinese technology giant, Ant is emerging from a near three-year-long regulatory crackdown that started with the shelving of its planned mega listing in 2020

Friday's $984 million fine on Ant Group, one of the largest ever for a Chinese internet company, is largely being seen as an end to Beijing’s tech crackdown

The move is China's latest effort to enable the internationalisation of the yuan and protect its economy from capital outflows and geopolitical risks