Future Bets

Alibaba has ranged far afield of e-commerce in recent years. It owns a movie studio, a soccer club and a Hong Kong newspaper, plus stakes in a variety of tech start-ups. The company is also spending $15 billion over the next several years on research in artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge fields.

In the near term, though, investors are more interested in Alibaba’s recently announced investment of the same amount in logistics. Alibaba has long depended on outside companies to deliver packages. But Jack Ma, the company’s founder and executive chairman, has said his goal is to ship anywhere in China within 24 hours, and anywhere in the world within 72. That will require a lot of spending.

Offline to Online

Alibaba has found ways to make more money from its shopping platforms. For instance, better targeting of ads at customers has helped generate more interest — and sales — from advertisers.

Still, the company also wants to capture more of the 85 percent of retail sales in China that take place offline. Alibaba has been buying stakes in grocers and other brick-and-mortar stores since well before Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods this year.

It has even opened its own grocery stores where purchases are made via smartphone app. These locations serve as hubs for delivering food to nearby homes, while also catering to shoppers who like to pick out fresh items, such as seafood, in person.

Alibaba says it is not interested in building a large grocery chain, however. The company says it wants to showcase the ways traditional retailers can incorporate online tools into their business — with the hope that those retailers will then do so using tools and services provided by Alibaba.

Going Global

Mr. Ma has circled the planet and hobnobbed with world leaders in his effort to take the Alibaba brand global. The company has paid billions of dollars to take control of Lazada, an e-commerce company in Southeast Asia. And Mr. Ma pledged this year that Alibaba would create a million jobs in the United States by linking small American businesses with Chinese shoppers, who tend to view American-made goods as higher quality.

But those efforts are not close to eclipsing Alibaba’s main businesses in China. In the latest quarter, Alibaba’s e-commerce business earned about 90 percent of its revenue at home.