Alibaba prepares potential spin-off, listing of chip unit T-Head

Alibaba Group Holding is paving the way for a listing of its wholly owned chip design unit T-Head, as a renewed frenzy to fund semiconductor development in China gathers pace, Bloomberg reported.

T-Head, founded in 2018, is set to be first restructured into a separate business partly held by employees, followed by Alibaba exploring an initial public offering (IPO), Bloomberg reported citing sources, adding that the timing remained unclear. Alibaba owns the Post.

Alibaba’s US-listed American depositary receipts rose more than 5 per cent in pre-market trading after the report on Thursday afternoon.

Alibaba did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

US investment bank Jefferies said it viewed T-Head as an extension of Alibaba’s full stack cloud infrastructure and deeply integrated with its AI infrastructure.

“It pursues a multi-chip strategy and T-Head serves the needs of various business segments,” Jefferies said in a note on Thursday.

Earlier this month, Baidu’s chip subsidiary Kunlunxin (Beijing) Technology confidentially filed an IPO application in Hong Kong, which helped push the company’s shares higher.