Alibaba Secures Eighth Spot on Fortune's 'Change the World' List with AI Accessibility
Fortune released its 2026 "Change the World" list on the evening of September 23 Beijing time, with Alibaba recognized again for providing leading AI capabilities to society. The company now appears on the list for the eighth time, making it the most frequent Chinese tech honoree. Alphabet, Samsung, Walmart, and CATL were also featured.
Fortune's citation praised Alibaba's efforts to use advanced AI to benefit broader social groups, noting that while the AI wave is reshaping the global economy and boosting productivity, it also raises urgent issues such as infrastructure sustainability and how ordinary workers can master cutting-edge technology. Companies on the list, including Alibaba, "use business creativity to solve social problems, benefiting society and themselves," Fortune said.
Alibaba has built a full-stack AI portfolio covering chips, cloud, models, and applications. Alibaba Cloud is the largest cloud provider in the Asia-Pacific region, with its latest quarterly revenue growing 45 percent. The Qwen3.8-Max model is in the same leading tier as Claude and GPT. Under its chip unit T-Head, self-developed processors have supported AI upgrades for more than 650 enterprises across 20 industries, and its new AI chip, Zhenwu V900, is described as the most powerful AI chip in China.
Alibaba has also open-sourced more than 460 Qwen models, with global downloads surpassing 3 billion and more than 300,000 derivative models, making it the world's largest open-source model family. Developers worldwide have extended Qwen-based applications into elderly care, rural education, and dialect recognition. In medical AI, Alibaba's DAMO Academy has developed screening models for pancreatic, gastric, and colorectal cancers, as well as a diagnosis model for liver cancer. Its "Youth Cloud Classroom" program has donated more than 400 AI cloud classrooms across the country.
The "Change the World" list, curated by Fortune for 12 years, honors companies that integrate social problem-solving into their core business models.
