Alibaba has one class of ordinary shares. Each one carries one vote. No person is known to the company to beneficially own 5% or more of them, and all directors and executive officers together hold 1.9%.
None of that tells you who controls the company.
Four of ten, with a standing right to six
The board currently consists of ten members: six independent directors nominated by the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, and four nominees of the Alibaba Partnership.
The company states the position plainly: "Alibaba Partnership has not fully exercised its director nomination right."
That right is an exclusive one to nominate, or in limited situations appoint, up to a simple majority of the board. Its operative clause is the fallback. If at any time the board consists of less than a simple majority of directors nominated or appointed by the Partnership — and the Articles specify this includes the case where the Partnership "had previously not exercised its right" — then the Partnership is entitled, "in its sole discretion and without the need for any additional shareholder action," to appoint as many additional directors as necessary to restore its simple majority.
The condition is therefore permanently satisfied. Four of ten is less than a simple majority. The Partnership could move to six of ten tomorrow, by its own decision, and no shareholder would vote on it.
The six-member independent majority is real. It is also revocable at will by a body that owns almost nothing.
What happens when shareholders say no
Partnership nominees stand for election and must receive a majority vote at the annual general meeting. This sounds like a constraint, and it is a weak one.
If a Partnership nominee is not elected, or later departs the board for any reason, the Partnership may appoint a different person as an interim director of that class, who serves until the next scheduled annual general meeting. At that meeting the interim director, or a replacement nominee other than the original, stands for election.
Shareholders can reject any particular individual. They cannot reduce the number of seats the Partnership fills, and the seat is never vacant while they try.
The 95% lock
Two provisions in the Articles put the arrangement beyond shareholder reach.
Any business combination that may adversely affect the Partnership's right to nominate or appoint a simple majority of the board — including the protective provisions for that right — must be approved by shareholders representing at least 95% of the votes present in person or by proxy. Separately, the nomination rights and the related provisions of the Articles may only be changed on the same 95% vote.
The threshold is set against votes present at a meeting rather than shares outstanding, so the absolute number of shares needed to block falls with turnout. A holder of just over 5% of the votes cast at a given meeting can defeat any attempt to alter the structure.
A classified board with staggered terms sits behind both, preventing the replacement of a majority of directors at one time.
Eighteen people, and two who cannot be voted out
The Partnership had eighteen members as of the annual report, and may not exceed twenty-six excluding continuity partners. Electing a new partner requires the approval of at least 50% of all partners.
Director nominees are proposed by a partnership committee of between five and seven partners, currently Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, Eddie Wu, Fan Jiang and Zeming Wu. The committee proposes nominees, all partners vote, and those receiving a simple majority are selected.
Two of the five are designated partnership committee continuity members: Jack Ma and Joe Tsai. Continuity members are not subject to election. They serve until they cease to be partners, retire from the committee, or become unable to discharge their duties through illness or permanent incapacity. Ordinary committee members serve five-year terms, with elections once every five years.
Jack Ma is neither a director nor an executive officer of Alibaba, and does not appear in the company's beneficial ownership table.
Why this profile publishes no Control Wedge
The Control Wedge measures voting power minus economic ownership. At Alibaba that number is zero, and the zero is accurate.
There is one class of shares and one vote per share. Whatever the Partnership's members own economically, they vote exactly that and no more. No loyalty scheme, no super-voting class, no pyramid sits between them and the register.
The divergence here is not between votes and economics. It is between ownership and board composition, and the wedge does not measure that. Publishing 0.0 would be arithmetically faithful to our definition and would tell you the opposite of what is true about this company.
What is not established here
The Partnership's aggregate economic stake. It is not disclosed as a bloc anywhere in the filing. The closest disclosed figure is all directors and executive officers as a group at 1.9% of 18,669,888,147 ordinary shares outstanding as of 18 May 2026 — but that group of fourteen named people is neither a subset nor a superset of the eighteen partners, and cannot be substituted for them.
The partnership agreement itself, which is not filed. What is public is the company's description of it, in the company's own words, in a document the company drafted.
Whether the Partnership has ever formally considered exercising the right to a full majority, and what would prompt it to.