Alibaba sells Lingxi Games for at least $1.5bn to fund AI infrastructure

Published Aug 17, 03:39 PM UTC

Alibaba has agreed to sell its entire stake in Lingxi Games, its game development unit, to Asian private equity firm Trustar Capital (formerly CITIC Capital). The deal, confirmed via an internal memo from Lingxi CEO Zhou Bingshu, is valued at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. The sale marks Alibaba's complete exit from in-house game development, freeing up capital to support its massive AI and cloud infrastructure program, which has already exceeded its original $53 billion budget. Lingxi, known for the mobile title 'Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition' developed with Koei Tecmo, will continue to be run by Zhou and his management team. Alibaba has also recently sold stakes in Sun Art and Intime for $2.6 billion and is preparing an IPO for its chip design unit T-Head to further fund its AI ambitions, targeting $100 billion in AI revenue within five years.