For the third trading day in a row, shares of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) are sliding down, as investors continue to reckon with Alibaba's decision to not IPO its Cloud Intelligence Group (CIG) cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) business, but keep it in-house instead.

This morning, Reuters reported that Alibaba is shuttering its quantum computing research lab (which was part of the AI effort) entirely and donating the equipment to Zhejiang University. Alibaba stock fell 2% through 11:30 a.m. ET in response.

It's not immediately clear whether Alibaba might get some tax benefits out of this, as might be the case for a U.S. company, for example, making a charitable donation of equipment to a public university. What does seem to be clear is that the same "U.S. restrictions on export of advanced computing chips [that created] uncertainties for the prospects of Cloud Intelligence Group" and its ability to conduct high-level AI research have also made it difficult for Alibaba to advance in the area of quantum computing.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com