Alibaba Group Holding has launched its spring hiring season, offering 3,000 internship positions to recent graduates, with a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI).
The recruitment drive targets students graduating between November 2025 and October 2026 and includes internships across multiple business units. Nearly half of the available roles are AI-focused, with over 80 percent of positions in the cloud computing division dedicated to AI.
This strong push for talent by Alibaba, the parent company of the South China Morning Post, comes amid a nationwide surge in AI adoption, spurred by the Chinese start-up DeepSeek. This increased focus on AI is creating a talent shortage across various sectors.
Despite a reduction in its workforce last year, with a decrease of 24,940 employees to 194,320, due to the divestment of its offline retail operations, the demand for skilled tech professionals remains high. “As a technology company committed to exploration and innovation, Alibaba is ramping up efforts to attract and cultivate AI talent,” said Jane Jiang Fang, chief people officer, in a recent hiring announcement. “We aim to provide outstanding young professionals with broad career opportunities as we embrace the vast potential of the AI era.”
The first phase of this internship recruitment is focused on Alibaba Group, Alibaba Cloud and its AI-model research unit Tongyi Lab, along with several other ventures, including the food delivery service Ele.me, the online mapping and ride-hailing platform Amap, and the video-gaming subsidiary Lingxi.
