Alibaba's IPO Rattles the Global Chessboard

The Shifting Balance of Internet Power

For years, Westerners pictured it as the creation of a snake charmer from a Persian souk. But this week, when Alibaba Group priced its IPO, even the most indolent observer got a major jolt. If anyone wants proof of the manner in which the balance of power in the technology world is shifting from the U.S. towards China, the IPO of Alibaba offers irrefutable evidence.

Forget about the fact that Alibaba’s offering could be the largest IPO ever staged in the U.S.; forget that Alibaba’s cash balance swelled by over $20 billion; forget the idea that Jack, the first name of the company’s principal founder, now joins the other twelve figure first names of the internet – Larry, Mark, Pony and Jeff; just look at the numbers and ponder the implications.

Alibaba is now the world’s fifth most-valuable TMT (Technology, Media and Telecom) company behind Apple ($614 billion), Google ($387 billion), Microsoft ($382 billion) and China Mobile ($259 billion). Peer a little closer and this list reveals more. The top fifty TMT companies, after Alibaba’s IPO, will have a combined market value of about $6.1 trillion. Thirty years ago U.S. companies accounted for the vast majority of this number. Today the U.S. share has fallen to about 66 percent. The Chinese share, which was smaller than a ladle of rice 30 years ago, has climbed to 10 percent.

A similar compilation of Internet companies is even more riveting. After the Alibaba IPO, the aggregate value of the world’s largest, fifty internet companies will be about $1.7 trillion of which about $530 billion is accounted for by Chinese companies formed in the past 15 years. Today, 15 of the world’s 50 most valuable – and imposing – internet companies are Chinese which, beyond Alibaba, include Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, VIP Shops, Qihoo and CTrip. Add up the combined value of a handful of companies brewed in the U.S. – EBay, Twitter, Netflix and Priceline – and you would still require about another $20 billion in order to match Alibaba’s market capitalization.

Beneath the surface, there are some less obvious trends. Thanks to the market opportunity on their back doorstep, Chinese internet companies have not wandered far from home it will be far easier for them to expand in the U.S. – organically and through acquisition or investments - than for their American counterparts to do the same in China. The U.S. companies will point accusatory fingers at regulators but, in the past decade, most of their problems in China have been self-inflicted – selection of the wrong people; the assumption that what worked in America will work elsewhere; and, of course, a reliance on English as the mother tongue. In addition the U.S. companies have had to contend with the formidable Chinese work ethic that sometimes makes Silicon Valley seem like the French Riviera in August.

The fact that the Chinese companies listed among the global TMT top 50 are a group of internet businesses, the two major domestic carriers – China Mobile, China Telecom – and Hon Hai, the electronic manufacturing company, should cause other technology leaders restless nights. Just because no Chinese semiconductor, networking, enterprise software or storage companies are included in the 2014 list is no guarantee that this will hold true in 2024.

Sequoia funds may have investment positions in companies mentioned. Photos: Hong Wu/Getty Images (top); Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images (bottom).