The White House is reportedly concerned that the tie-up would help a Chinese firm improve its AI abilities and also make Apple more vulnerable to Beijing's censorship and data-sharing laws

The tech giant’s shares are up more than 70% so far this year after jumping nearly 90% over the past 12 months

Apple chose Alibaba partly due to the e-commerce giant’s vast troves of personal data on users' shopping and payment habits, which could help train AI models

Beijing imposed a record $2.75 billion fine on the tech outfit in 2021 and has been ‘guiding’ the company’s efforts to fall into line

Along with Ma, Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai also purchased about $151 million worth of Alibaba's US-traded shares

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