Chinese mega-retailer, Alibaba has briefly surpassed its American rival to become the world’s biggest e-commerce company retailer in the world.
Alibaba’s market value topped $472 billion, bringing its cap just above that of Amazon (a mere $471.9 billion). This is the first time that this has happened in 28 months. Following its initial public offering in 2014, Alibaba held the top spot for nine months until excitement finally cooled down a bit.
While Amazon is doing well enough recently, Alibaba is having a fascinating year, exceeding even its own expectations with the company’s stock up over 109 percent since the start of the year. It’s now the world’s sixth biggest company and the biggest in Asia.
And it has no plans of stopping there. After making $2.8 billion in June, Jack Ma estimated that by 2036, Alibaba will be the world’s fifth-largest economy, surpassing the GDP of countries like Germany, the United Kingdom, France and India.
While Alibaba still makes most of its money in China, the company is gradually grabbing hold of Southeast Asia as well, where it is fighting off Amazon in important markets like Singapore. The company even plans to challenge Amazon on its own turf with Ma vowing earlier this year during a meeting with then president-elect Donald Trump that Alibaba will create 1 million American jobs over the next five years.