Alibaba vs MercadoLibre: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Alibaba and MercadoLibre side by side

1. 1999Alibaba

   Alibaba.com Launched

   Jack Ma and 17 co-founders launch Alibaba.com from a Hangzhou apartment with $60,000 in pooled savings, creating a B2B online marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with international buyers.

2. 1999Alibaba

   First Major Investment from SoftBank

   Masayoshi Son invests $20 million in Alibaba in a meeting reportedly lasting five minutes, alongside $5 million from Goldman Sachs, providing survival capital through the imminent dot-com crash.

3. 1999MercadoLibre

   MercadoLibre Founded in Buenos Aires: Marcos Galperin and Hernan Kazah established MercadoLibre in a garage in Buenos Aires, securing seed funding from HM Capital after a Stanford pitch.

4. 2001Alibaba

   Gold Supplier Program Launch

   Alibaba launches the Gold Supplier verified membership program at $3,000 per year, generating approximately $10 million in first-year revenue and proving the B2B marketplace model's commercial viability.

5. 2001MercadoLibre

   Strategic Partnership with eBay: eBay acquired a 19.5% stake in MercadoLibre in exchange for its Brazilian subsidiary iBazar, providing vital capital to survive the dot-com crash.

6. 2003Alibaba

   Taobao Launches to Challenge eBay

   Alibaba secretly develops and launches Taobao, a consumer-to-consumer marketplace offered free to both buyers and sellers, directly targeting eBay's Chinese market position. Within three years, Taobao surpasses eBay's Chinese market share.

7. 2003MercadoLibre

   Launch of Mercado Pago: Introduced Mercado Pago to provide secure digital escrow and payment processing across Latin America's cash-reliant economies.

8. 2004Alibaba

   Alipay Escrow Service Created

   Alibaba creates Alipay as a payment escrow solution for Taobao transactions, holding buyer funds until delivery confirmation before releasing payment to sellers solving the trust barrier that was limiting online commerce adoption.

9. 2007MercadoLibre

   Landmark Initial Public Offering on NASDAQ: Listed on NASDAQ under ticker symbol MELI, becoming the first Latin American technology company to debut on the US exchange.

10. 2008Alibaba

    Tmall (Taobao Mall) Launch

    Alibaba launches a premium B2C marketplace initially called Taobao Mall (later rebranded Tmall), allowing established brands to operate official storefronts with higher trust credentials and enabling Alibaba to serve the premium consumer segment.

11. 2008MercadoLibre

    DeRemate Acquired

    MercadoLibre completed its purchase of the regional rival DeRemate in 2008.

12. 2009Alibaba

    Alibaba Cloud Founded

    Alibaba launches Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) as a cloud computing business, a decade ahead of many enterprise adoption cycles, positioning it to become Asia Pacific's dominant cloud provider.

13. 2011Alibaba

    First Singles' Day Shopping Festival

    Alibaba transforms the informal 'Singles' Day' celebration on November 11 into a promotional shopping event on Taobao and Tmall, generating ~$130 million (936 million yuan) in sales a figure that would grow more than 100-fold in subsequent years.

14. 2013MercadoLibre

    Launch of Mercado Envios Logistics: Built proprietary fulfillment infrastructure and warehousing to overcome regional courier inefficiencies and accelerate delivery times.

15. 2014Alibaba

    Record-Breaking NYSE IPO

    Alibaba completes its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014, raising $25 billion the largest IPO in US stock market history at that time at a valuation of approximately $168 billion.

16. 2017MercadoLibre

    Adoption of NASDAQ-100 & Offline POS Expansion: Included in the NASDAQ-100 index; scaled Mercado Pago into offline brick-and-mortar retail via mobile QR codes and Point mPOS card readers.

17. 2019Alibaba

    Dual Listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange

    Alibaba completes a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising an additional $13 billion and broadening its investor base among Asian institutional and retail investors, reducing dependence on US capital markets.

18. 2020MercadoLibre

    Pandemic Acceleration & Meli Air Launch: Pandemic lockdowns accelerated online shopping and digital payments across Latin America; MercadoLibre began operating dedicated Meli Air cargo flights in Braz…

19. 2021Alibaba

    Record Antitrust Fine

    Chinese regulators impose a 18.23 billion yuan ($2.8 billion USD) antitrust fine on Alibaba following a months-long investigation into its 'choose one from two' exclusivity practices at the time, the largest antitrust fine in Chinese regulatory history.

20. 2023Alibaba

    Six-Business-Unit Restructuring Announced

    Alibaba announces its most significant organizational restructuring, dividing the company into six independent business units each with its own CEO and board: Taobao Tmall Group, Cloud Intelligence Group, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, Cainiao S…

21. 2024MercadoLibre

    Revenue passes $20 billion: Revenue reached $20.8 billion and net income $1.9 billion, as Mercado Ads and the credit business scaled.

22. 2025MercadoLibre

    $28.9B revenue year: Revenue grew 39% to $28.9 billion and net income reached about $2.0 billion. In May 2025, the company announced Galperin's planned transition to executive chairman.

23. 2026MercadoLibre

    New CEO and first $10B quarter: Ariel Szarfsztejn became CEO on January 1, 2026, with Marcos Galperin as executive chairman.

Acquisitions

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