New Delhi, Nov. 26 -- China's Alibaba Group posted a 34% jump in revenue from its cloud business in its most recent quarter, buoyed by the boom in artificial intelligence.

But overall revenue at the Chinese tech group for the July-September quarter increased by just 5% year-on-year to 247.8 billion yuan ($35 billion), and profit fell 52% from last year, as a fierce price war in China's e-commerce landscape - including in the food delivery segment - eroded into short-term profitability. JD.com, its e-commerce rival, reported a 55% net profit drop in the same quarter.

Alibaba started out in e-commerce and later turned its focus to cloud and AI technologies. Earlier this year, it pledged to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) in...