BABA is trading 3.84% up now at $173.47 after Chinese media reported the company is developing 'Plan C,' a new AI project through its Quark unit to compete with ByteDance's Doubao chatbot[1]. The initiative has backing from Alibaba's Tongyi Labs, which develops the company's flagship Qwen large language models[1]. Adding to momentum, Alibaba's Singles' Day shopping festival launched October 21, 2025 with strong initial results, as 80 brands surpassed 100 million yuan in revenue within the first hour and over 30,000 brands doubled their year-over-year sales[3]. iPhone sales on Apple's official Tmall store exceeded last year's full-day total within just two hours[3]. The stock is now trading near four-year highs around $166-173, up roughly 85-97% year-to-date in 2025[1].