GoKawiilThe Alibaba logo is pictured during a tour at the Alibaba office in Beijing on April 1, 2026.
A mysterious AI video model that has ascended global leaderboards has been confirmed as a project from Chinese tech giant Alibaba , in a development that could boost the company's artificial intelligence ambitions.
HappyHorse-1.0, which appeared on the benchmarking platform Artificial Analysis around April 7, without identifying its affiliations, climbed to the top of blind-test rankings for both text-to-video and image-to-video generation.
The developers revealed in a newly created X account Friday that HappyHorse was part of Alibaba's ATH AI Innovation Unit and that the project was still under development. Alibaba confirmed to CNBC that the post was genuine.
The anonymous debut of the model had sparked online speculation about whether the developer was a tech giant such as Tencent or Alibaba or an independent developer.
The Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba closed 2.12% higher Friday after news of its involvement. Its stock rose 6.75% on Wednesday, lifted by a broader rally in technology stocks after U.S.-Iran tensions eased, alongside speculation that Alibaba was behind the mysterious model.