China’s biggest tech company did not make any publicly disclosed investments in the US last year, as the increasing hostility between Washington and Beijing brought a multiyear spending spree by Chinese companies in Silicon Valley to an end.
Alibaba, the $580bn ecommerce company founded by Jack Ma, began making investments in the US in 2013, snapping up stakes in fast-growing start-ups such as Lyft and Snap before they went public.
But it is now leading the retreat, with other Chinese investors also pulling back from the US. Last year, publicly disclosed investments in US start-ups by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent fell 84 per cent from 2018, according to an analysis by the data provider PitchBook.