Alibaba.com

Alibaba, or Alibaba Group Holding Limited, is a Chinese business that specializes in e-commerce and online retail. It has its headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhegiang, China but operates globally. The company was founded in 1999 to provide C2C, B2C, and B2B sales through web portals and electronic payment services.

The company now owns a large number of varied businesses and operations across the globe, operating in numerous sectors.

Alibaba employs over 66,400 full-time employees and offers a wide range of job roles ranging from admin, to sales, to marketing, to assembly line maintenance, and more. The company does not have its own warehouses but rather lists products and services provided by other businesses.

The name Alibaba is an homage to the character Ali Baba from Arabian literature. The company was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and Peng Lei, with the original intention being to open traditional brick and mortar outlets by 2013.

At the time of closing on its IPO in 2014, Alibaba achieved the record for funds raised at $25 billion USD. The market value was $231 billion USD. That has continued to grow and today the company's market cap stands at $542 billion USD. The company is one of the top 10 most valuable in the world by many measures, as well as one of the largest. It also has the 9th highest overall brand value. In January 2018, it became one of only two Asian companies to be valued at over $500 billion.

In 2018, Alibaba was named as one of the most admired companies by Fortune.