Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) stock continued to gain on Wednesday's report, citing co-founder Jack Ma expressing solidarity with the company's restructuring under the leadership of Chairman Joseph Tsai and CEO Eddie Wu.

Ma, in a very positive tone, urged the employees to keep up with artificial intelligence technology, pivotal in the changing e-commerce landscape as Alibaba battled intense competition with PDD Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PDD), the Nikkei Asia reports.

The 59-year-old Ma helmed Alibaba for nearly two decades as Chair until 2019.

Ma was often spotted traveling abroad, studying agriculture, and teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo.

Meanwhile, Alibaba Cloud remains engaged in a price war with its domestic competitors but is doling out discounts of up to 59% for its cloud services for international clients ranging from the U.S. to Singapore.

The company also shared plans to improve discounts and commission rates for its resellers and extend the availability of its artificial intelligence computing platform, PAI-Lingjun, to Singapore.

Tsai held the U.S. technology sanctions on China responsible for the latter lagging in the AI development race.

Price Action: BABA shares traded higher by 0.78% at $75.17 premarket on the last check Thursday.