Text size Cohen is pushing for Alibaba to expand its share-repurchase plan by $20 billion, to roughly $60 billion, the WSJ reported. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg Investor Ryan Cohen, who has found fame with activist campaigns at meme stocks such as GameStop and Bed Bath & Beyond, is now targeting Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The billionaire co-founder of Chewy and chairman of GameStop (ticker: GME) has built up a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Alibaba (BABA) in the second half of last year and is pushing for the company to increase its stock buybacks. , The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. A person familiar with the matter has confirmed the Journal’s report to Barron’s. Launching a campaign at a company as large as Alibaba, which has a market capitalization of more than $300 billion, is a departure from Cohen’s other active ventures which have focused on smaller US companies. Alibaba stock was up 0.3% in premarket trading. Cohen’s army of retail-investor fans seem less likely to follow him into an investment in a major Chinese company with little prospect of the kind of ‘short-squeeze’ dynamics that produced sharp rallies in GameStop stock, especially after Cohen’s surprise sale of his stake in Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY). However, Cohen could be positioned to benefit from the rebound in Chinese technology stocks due to a perceived relaxation of Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on the sector and any further stock buyback plans implemented by Alibaba. Cohen is pushing for the company to expand its share-repurchase plan by $20 billion, to roughly $60 billion, the WSJ reported. Alibaba didn’t respond immediately to a Barron’s request for comment early on Tuesday. Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com