Investing.com-- Mizuho on Thursday hiked Alibaba Group’s (HK: 9988 ) price target and added the Chinese e-commerce giant to its top picks among Asian internet stocks, citing potential in the company’s artificial intelligence ventures.

Mizuho raised its price target on Alibaba’s American Depository Receipts (NYSE: BABA ) to $170 from $140 and maintained their rating at Outperform.

The investment bank said a deep dive into Alibaba’s AI prospects showed a clear product roadmap, with the e-commerce giant appearing to have “rock-solid building blocks” for AI investments ranging from scaling models to platform models for consumers.

Mizuho also sees Alibaba’s AI efforts improving internal productivity, and that growing AI demand is expected to boost revenues from the company’s cloud unit.

Mizuho noted that Alibaba’s Qwen model was already on par/ahead of most major global AIs, and that the firm has leveraged this by using the model across a host of development tools. This bolsters the cloud unit’s product stack.

Mizuho also expects AI to improve internal productivity, especially as it is applied across Alibaba’s other major sectors, particularly e-commerce.

Recent reports showed Alibaba had issued an internal mandate for all its divisions, in that their performance would be gauged on how much AI they incorporated into their output.

Alibaba is at the forefront of China’s AI efforts, having poured billions into the technology since 2023.

The company’s shares also benefited from increasing optimism over China’s AI potential this year, especially following the release of DeepSeek.

Beyond AI, the company was also seen benefiting from a recovery in local demand for its e-commerce unit, after Beijing doled out a host of new stimulus measures aimed at boosting private consumption.