Alibaba CEO Jack Ma seemed stunned initially when Bloomberg reporter Emily Chang asked about a possible joint venture with Amazon.com.

Jack Ma on the NYSE floor
Jack Ma on the NYSE floor

“Oh, really, I heard about it from you. I have never heard about that,” Ma said.  But Ma quickly changed gears, and noted that he’d be open to the possibility.

“I would be interested in talking because as always anything, anybody that involving helping small business we will feel excited,” said Ma, a former English teacher who founded the Chinese e-commerce giant in 1999. He’s now the richest man in China.

Alibaba is valued at $167 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, greater than Amazon.com’s $153 billion market cap.

Ma was also asked whether he’d consider buying Yahoo, the company’s long-time partner. Yahoo bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005, and owned 22.4 percent just prior to the IPO. Yahoo is valued at $42 billion and sold about $8 billion worth of Alibaba stock today. It now owns 16 percent.

“I don’t know if they would sell,” said Ma with a laugh. “No. I think the very important thing is that we want to build up a company, not the buying company. We want to make sure that our ecosystem helps the small guys. Anything that can help the small business grow we will consider.”

The Alibaba IPO also is the largest ever, as this chart from Statista shows.

alibabaipo

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