In a filing with the SEC on Friday, Alibaba said it had bought up about 4.8 million Zulily Class A shares at a cost of about $56 million. © AFP/File Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has acquired a more than 9% stake in US online retailer Zulily, according to regulatory papers.

The Seattle-based retailer primarily sells clothing, toys, and other items for kids and is mainly marketed toward mothers.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday, Alibaba said it had bought up about 4.8 million Zulily Class A shares at a cost of around $56 million.

Added to the shares it already owned, Alibaba now has about a sixth of Zulily's Class A stock, representing a 9.3% stake in the company, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Alibaba operates China's most popular online shopping platform, Taobao, which is estimated to hold more than 90% of the country's online market for consumer-to-consumer transactions.

Analysts with Wells Fargo recently expressed their belief that Alibaba will soon be bigger and more profitable than Wal-Mart, thanks to the company's aggressive investments in e-retail.

It made its debut on Wall Street in September last year, raising $25.02 billion and breaking the record for the largest initial public offering in history.

Meanwhile, Zulily's share price closed up 12.67% at $13.30 on Friday.

It went public in November 2013 at $22 a share. Within months, the price had soared to about $70, but then fell quickly back down again as growth slowed.

Just this week, Zulily shares crashed after drastically cutting its sales outlook for the rest of 2015, meaning that this cash infusion from Alibaba may have been well timed.

Alibaba's shares were up 1.23% to close at $87.06 on Friday.