Joseph Tsai touches down in Anchorage amid Alibaba’s AI push in Europe and China

Joseph Tsai flew from Hong Kong to Anchorage on June 19, landing his Gulfstream G700 after a ten-hour Pacific crossing. The fuel-and-customs stop, a common route to the U.S. East Coast, puts him within range of his New York home base and the Brooklyn Nets’ summer operations.

Tsai’s trip comes the same week Alibaba leaned heavily on AI to revive China’s subdued 618 shopping festival, per Nikkei Asia, and days after he told Paris’s VivaTech conference that AI’s addressable market is “much, much bigger than the software market.” He also discussed investment opportunities with General Catalyst’s Jeannette zu Fürstenberg at a Bloomberg event on June 18, as the U.S. faces G7 backlash over blocking export of American AI models. Alibaba is positioning its open-source Qwen models as a sovereignty-friendly alternative for European firms.

The itinerary shows a busy month for Tsai: after chairing Alibaba’s AI summit in Paris, he flew through Zurich, Amsterdam, Munich, and Berlin before returning via Shanghai and Taipei. Anchorage is a predictable refueling point on the great circle route from Hong Kong to Teterboro or JFK, but the timing—with Alibaba’s AI strategy dominating headlines in both Asia and Europe—suggests business, not just basketball, is the priority.