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Alibaba Faces Anthropic Accusation, Daiwa Price Target Cut, and $1.5B Pupu Bid
Alibaba Group Holding Limited is facing a series of developments including an accusation from AI startup Anthropic, a price target cut from Daiwa, and a $1.5 billion acquisition offer for Chinese grocery delivery company Pupu. On June 25, 2026, Anthropic accused Alibaba of a large-scale effort to illicitly access its Claude artificial intelligence model, alleging that operators linked to Alibaba's Qwen AI lab used thousands of fraudulent accounts to target Claude's software engineering and agentic reasoning capabilities. On June 24, Daiwa lowered its price target on Alibaba to $175 from $200 while maintaining a Buy rating, citing a negative surprise from China's 2026 6.18 shopping festival where overall gross merchandise value rose only 0.9% year-over-year compared to 15% growth in 2025. On June 12, Alibaba offered $1.5 billion for Pupu, more than double a competing $600 million bid from Sun Art Retail, signaling a competitive push into quick-commerce and grocery delivery shortly after Meituan's $717 million acquisition of Dingdong Fresh.
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Pupu · Capital · Positive Alibaba offered $1.5B for Pupu, more than double a competing bid, signaling high valuation.
9988.HK · Competition · Negative Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly accessing its Claude AI model, raising competitive and legal concerns.
9988.HK · Regulation · Negative Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly accessing its AI model, posing legal and reputational risk.
9988.HK · Demand · Negative Daiwa cut price target citing weak 6.18 shopping festival GMV growth of 0.9% vs 15% last year, indicating soft consumer demand.
9988.HK · Capital · Neutral Alibaba offered $1.5B for Pupu, a large acquisition that could boost quick-commerce but also raises integration risks.
6808.HK · Competition · Negative Alibaba's $1.5B bid for Pupu more than doubles Sun Art Retail's $600M bid, likely outbidding them.