Alibaba says to restart hiring, sees signs of start of AI bubble in the US

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Tsai said tech companies taking heart from meeting with Xi

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Alibaba's ( BABA ) headcount declined for 12 quarters

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Says some data center announcements worrying, sees start of AI bubble

(Adds analyst comments in paragraphs 11-13)

By Kane Wu and Selena Li

HONG KONG, March 25 (Reuters) - Alibaba Group ( BABA ) Chairman Joe Tsai said on Tuesday the tech giant would recommence hiring, emboldened with more confidence following President Xi Jinping's February meeting with business entrepreneurs.

He also expressed concern about some very big investment announcements in artificial intelligence in the U.S., saying it could be the start of a bubble.

Tsai lauded the rare meeting between Xi and big names in Chinese tech, including Alibaba ( BABA ) co-founder Jack Ma, which marked a distinct thawing in Beijing's approach to the sector. A regulatory clampdown on the industry four years ago sapped corporate appetite for investment and led to widespread layoffs.

The meeting was also seen as reflecting policymakers' concerns about slow growth and U.S. efforts to limit technological development in the world's second-largest economy.

It "was a very, very clear signal to the business community that, go ahead, reinvest in your business and also go out and hire people," Tsai told HSBC's Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong.

He noted Alibaba's ( BABA ) headcount had declined for the past 12 quarters.

"So I think we've reached the bottom, and we're going to start to reboot and rehire."

China's economy has been beset by sputtering growth over the past few years, also hobbled by a debt crisis in the real estate sector, leading to job insecurity, high unemployment for the country's youth and weak consumer sentiment.

Hiring, however, would lead to good things, Tsai said.

"Once you hire people, that gives people job security, right, job security and income growth that will translate from business confidence into consumer confidence," he said.

Guo Shan, a partner at Hutong Research, said private firms like Alibaba ( BABA ) were key to creating jobs for China's 13 million college students graduating every year, given that roughly a quarter of those graduates usually wanted jobs in IT and internet-related sectors.

She noted that the success of DeepSeek, the Chinese startup which has shaken up the AI sector with its low-cost models, has also been a boon.

"DeepSeek and particularly its open-source nature has boosted confidence in China's tech sector and widened the application scenarios - so tech firms will need to hire more for businesses anyway," she said.

While Alibaba ( BABA ) has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence, Tsai said he was "astounded by the type of numbers that's being thrown around" in the United States.

"People are talking about $500 billion, several hundred billion dollars. I don't think that's entirely necessary. I think in a way, people are investing ahead of the demand that they're seeing today."

He said he thought it was worrying when people began to talk about building data centers on spec, adding that he was seeing "the beginning of some kind of bubble."

By comparison, Alibaba ( BABA ) plans to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next three years.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Tech Index, comprising leading tech companies including Alibaba ( BABA ), has risen 24% this year, fuelled by Xi's meeting with tech sector leaders and excitement over DeepSeek's AI models. (Reporting by Selena Li and Kane Wu in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Che Pan in Beijing; Writing by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Edwina Gibbs)