EMQQ Global Performance Overview
The leading positive contributors to the EMQQ Index's performance in February were India’s Bajaj Finance and China’s PDD Holdings. The former received a boost from a robust set of results that highlighted the company's major inroads in using AI to accelerate digital loans in India. PDD rose on expectations that its popular cross-border e-commerce brand, Temu, is expected to see stronger growth in 2026.
The two largest detractors for the month were Alibaba and Latin America’s Mercadolibre. While the former pulled back for the month, Alibaba continues to make aggressive strides across its AI business, from releasing new, more accurate large language models (LLMs) to incorporating its Qwen AI across its vast consumer internet ecosystem, which spans one billion users. Mercadolibre continues to go from strength to strength, recording its 28th consecutive quarter of 30% revenue growth, driven by strong gains in its fintech unit. More on both below.
Sources: Bloomberg, Company financials
At a Glance:
Alibaba Makes Major AI Model Upgrades and Pushes Deeper Into AI Coding
Chart of the Month
Alibaba Makes Major AI Model Upgrades and Pushes Deeper Into AI Coding
Amid intensifying global competition in generative AI, Alibaba has unveiled a major upgrade to its flagship Qwen model family while simultaneously expanding into AI-powered coding tools. The company’s new Qwen 3.5 release represents a significant step forward in performance, efficiency, and multimodal capability. Qwen 3.5 reportedly supports advanced agent-style workflows, longer context windows, and improved reasoning across text and images, positioning it as highly competitive with leading Western frontier models. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud is rolling out affordable AI coding services built on Qwen, targeting developers and enterprises seeking productivity gains. Together, these initiatives demonstrate Alibaba’s accelerating AI ambitions—strengthening its domestic leadership in China while expanding its global relevance through scalable cloud distribution and developer adoption.
Mercadolibre's Continued Rise
MercadoLibre posted another impressive quarter, with net revenue up ~45% year-over-year to about $8.8 billion, marking its 28th consecutive quarter of >30% revenue growth, underscoring sustained top-line momentum across Latin America’s e-commerce and fintech markets. Commerce metrics showed continued strength with GMV up ~37% and unique active buyers rising, reflecting deeper engagement and improving frequency trends across Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. The fintech arm, Mercado Pago, expanded rapidly: monthly active users climbed roughly 30%, the credit portfolio nearly doubled, total payment volume surged strongly, and assets under management soared. AI initiatives are also paying off — advertising revenue surged and AI-driven tools (like autonomous support assistants and optimized bidding algorithms) are enhancing user experiences, underwriting precision, personalization, and overall operational efficiency across the ecosystem.
India Leads World in AI App Downloads
In 2025, India became the world’s largest market for generative AI app downloads, surpassing the United States, with installs surging roughly 207% year over year and accounting for nearly one-fifth of all global GenAI app downloads, according to a Sensor Tower report cited by TechCrunch. This milestone underscores the scale and speed of India’s AI adoption, fueled by its massive smartphone user base, affordable data, and rapidly expanding digital infrastructure. India’s strong developer ecosystem and government-backed digital public infrastructure are also accelerating experimentation and use cases. With rising AI awareness among consumers, growing enterprise integration, and the emergence of credible domestic models and startups, India appears poised to transition from being just the largest download market to becoming one of the world’s most important AI innovation hubs
Nubank Delivers Strong Growth (Again)
Nubank, Latin America’s largest digital bank, delivered another standout quarter, with total revenue up ~45% year-over-year to ~$4.9 billion, driven by heightened engagement and monetization across its digital banking platform, underscoring robust demand in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Net income reached a record ~$895 million, up roughly 50% YoY, and return on equity hit an all-time high ~33%, reflecting scalable profitability and disciplined execution. The customer base expanded to 131 million users, adding millions of net new customers, while credit portfolio growth remained strong. AI and technology played a key role — the bank’s AI-powered underwriting models and digital tools boosted credit growth, net interest income, and engagement metrics, helping enhance decisioning, personalization, and operational efficiency as Nubank scales
Reliance Prepares $100 Billion AI Bet for India
In February, Reliance Industries announced plans to invest roughly $110 billion over the coming years to build out AI infrastructure, data centers, and digital services—one of the largest technology capex programs in India’s history. The scale of this commitment positions Reliance to become a foundational layer of India’s AI ecosystem, supplying compute, cloud, and model deployment capabilities to enterprises and startups alike.
Combined with Meta Platforms deepening its AI collaboration with Reliance across connectivity and digital platforms, the initiative strengthens India’s integration into the global AI value chain. Strategically, this accelerates domestic innovation, reduces reliance on imported infrastructure, and reinforces India’s ambition to emerge as a leading AI hub while expanding Reliance’s long-term growth runway in high-margin digital services.
India Launches Its First Major LLM and AI Chatbot
India’s Sarvam AI has just unveiled its first large language models — including a 105-billion-parameter LLM — and launched Indus, its first chatbot built on this homegrown foundation. This marks a major milestone in India’s AI journey, showcasing not just consumption but also the creation of advanced generative AI tailored to the Indian context, especially in multilingual and voice-first use cases. By developing sovereign models trained for Indian languages and deploying a consumer-facing chatbot, Sarvam signals that India’s AI ecosystem is maturing rapidly. Local internet companies are now competing with global giants while addressing unique linguistic and cultural needs — a strong signal that AI adoption in India is surging from both demand and innovation standpoints. This all comes as India led the world in Gen AI app downloads in 2025.
China’s AI app users have surged from 100 million in 2022 to over 700 million in late 2025 — a sevenfold increase in four years. Adoption is accelerating as AI integrates into platforms like Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu (all top EMQQ Index constituents), embedding AI into everyday commerce, search, and digital services.
Source: Questmobile, South Asia China Post