Ant Group's three independent sectors have successively launched external financing, with the "AI leadership and financial support" strategy taking shape

Ant Group's three independent sectors, Ant International, OceanBase, and Ant Technology, have recently launched intensive external financing. Among them, Ant International completed approximately $1.2 billion in Series A financing in July, OceanBase is seeking about 2 to 3 billion yuan in Series A financing, and Ant Technology is preparing for Pre-IPO financing. All three companies will operate independently starting in March 2024. Sources close to Ant indicate that this round of financing is more of a phased test of the effectiveness of the three companies' independent operations, and they have not yet entered the preparation stage for an IPO.

OceanBase's annual revenue has exceeded 1.4 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of about 70%; Ant Technology's revenue is expected to be around 5 billion yuan in 2025, with a target of about 8 billion yuan in 2026. Ant International's revenue is projected to be around $3.75 billion in 2025. Since 2023, Ant Group has invested nearly 80 billion yuan in technology, shifting its strategic focus from fintech to AI and data elements, with its financial business humorously referred to internally as the department that "earns living expenses" for the AI business.

Currently, Ant's overall valuation is approximately 592 billion yuan, a reduction of more than 70% from 2.1 trillion yuan on the eve of its IPO in 2020. The market believes that a spin-off listing is a more realistic path than an overall listing for the group, but each sector still needs to prove its independent customer acquisition capabilities to open the doors to the capital market.