As wide as Alibaba's interests seem to be, Lin Wenbin, an analyst with IT consultancy Analysys International, said that its investments are focused on one thing: building a strong company in the Internet era.

"Many traditional services, such as finance, can be shifted online now. Alibaba is no longer an e-commerce company. It just did what it had to in order to stay strong in this rapidly changing tech world," Lin said.

Jack Ma invests $532m in financial software firm

Alibaba aims to develop offline business

Alibaba and founder's purchases in 2014

Feb 10

Alibaba offered to buy the remaining shares of AutoNavi Holdings Ltd, a digital mapping company listed in the United States, after it acquired a 28 percent stake in the company for $294 million last May.

March 12

Alibaba agreed to pay HK$6.24 billion ($804 million) for a 60 percent stake in the Hong Kong-listed China Vision Media Group Ltd, which has a rich business portfolio, including print media, television and films, and mobile games.

March 20

Alibaba invested $215 million in the California-based mobile chat application Tango.

March 31

Alibaba agreed to invest as much as HK$5.37 billion ($692.2 million) in the Hong Kong-listed department store operator Intimae Retail (Group) Co Ltd. The overall capital injection will give Alibaba about a 9.9 percent equity stake in Intimae and the retailer's convertible bonds worth HK$3.71 billion. Once the bonds are converted into shares in three years, Alibaba will have no less than 25 percent of Intimae's equity.

April 3

Zhejiang Finance Credit Network Technology Co, which is 99 percent owned by Alibaba's founder Jack Ma, agreed to pay 3.3 billion yuan ($531.78 million) to take the controlling stake of financial software firm Hudson Technologies Inc.

April 8

An investment firm controlled by Alibaba founders agreed to purchase a 20 percent stake in digital-television company Wasu Media Holding Co for about 6.54 billion yuan ($1.06 billion).

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