Groupon has launched in China under the name Gaopeng.com. The website will initially cover Beijing and Shanghai. Tencent Holdings and Yunfeng Capital are investors in Gaopeng. Yunfeng Capital is a private equity fund started by Alibaba.com Chairman Jack Ma. Some of Gaopeng.com’s competitors include Lashou.com and Meituan.com. [Bloomberg]

Alibaba.com Ltd. CEO David Wei said that the company is working on a new business strategy where clients can sell wholesale products world-wide to online e-commerce services like eBay.com.

Jack Ma, the chairman of B2B trading website Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688.HK) and Target Media Holdings Ltd. founder Yu Feng have teamed up to start a private equity firm to invest in Chinese IT companies. Yun Feng Capital, the name of the new venture company, will have a value of about CNY10 billion ($1.48 billion). Ma is making the investments personally. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) owns 39% of Alibaba Group.

Alibaba Group is an Internet company that focuses on B2B, business management software, and online retail.  The company was started by Ma Yun (Jack Ma) around 1999.  The company is huge in China and plans to aggressively market themselves in the U.S.  They have even announced to be planning a $30 million advertising campaign starting Monday according to the WSJ.

Alibaba has also tripled their staff in the U.S.  Last quarter, the company’s net income dropped about 15% because of the company has been spending aggressively on marketing campaigns.  Alibaba even said that they plan to spend $200-$300 million on acquisitions by 2012.

Customers in the U.S. account for 15% of Alibaba’s visitors in their marketplace.  Yahoo! owns 44% in Alibaba.  And Alibaba.com operates Yahoo! China.  When Microsoft made the search engine deal with Yahoo!, Alibaba was left out.

[via paidContent]