Alibaba founder and Chairman Jack Ma is meeting with eBay, Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Starbucks, and GE to discuss possible partnerships. Top Alibaba executives are in the U.S. for an internal team building event and are participating in the meetings with Ma. The delegation includes 10 senior managers from the Alibaba Group, including the presidents of Alibaba.com, Taobao.com, Alipay and Alisoft. Alibaba is not meeting with Overstock.com.

Alibaba is also recruiting employees in the U.S., as reported by Bloomberg. Alibaba Group plans to increase its worldwide workforce by 5,000 this year from its current level of 12,000.

An Alibaba spokesperson said most of the recruitment will be done in China, but the company will also be hiring international talent from the U.S. "Given the fast-growing industry we are in and the resources we have, we want to invest in the future and transform ourselves from a China-focused e-commerce provider into a global Internet marketplace."

Alibaba will be doubling the staff in its U.S. office to about 50 this year, according to the spokesperson. "We believe the real impact we can have in the U.S. this year is by driving more buyers to support our existing SME paid customers, which means real employment for potentially millions of Americans. The U.S. is our second largest market now with more than 1 million registered users. And there are some 200,000 companies that depend, at least in part, on Alibaba.com."

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