OREANDA-NEWS. Alibaba Group shares skyrocketed after news broke of the company's founder Jack Ma's first overseas trip in a year. During trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday, October 20, Alibaba rose at a peak of 9 percent - from 165 to 180 Hong Kong dollars per share (23.15 USD). At the close of trading, the share price was $ 175.8 (plus 6.67 percent compared to the close of the previous session).

Also, the growth of Alibaba shares was influenced by the news about the release of chips of its own design. The company plans to use the 128-core Yitian 710 chip for the processors in its data centers.

On October 19, Alibaba's South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, citing an anonymous source said that Ma had flown to Europe for informational purposes and to participate in business negotiations. In Spain, the founder of Alibaba will be presented with technologies related to solving environmental problems. The trip was the first in more than a year, although in 2018 Ma spent one day out of three traveling, the newspaper notes.

Ma began to appear less often in public since October 2020 after criticizing China's regulators. At a conference in Shanghai, the businessman attributed Chinese state-owned banks to pawnshops and accused regulators of curbing innovation. A few days later, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) of China launched an investigation against Alibaba on suspicion of violating antitrust laws. Government harassment thwarted the IPO (initial public offering) of Ant Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba. The listing was supposed to be the largest in history in terms of the amount of funds raised.