Meme stock champion Ryan Cohen has reportedly acquired a minority stake in Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) and is pushing the company to speed up its share buyback plan.
Cohen's stake could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but the exact size of the stake remains unknown.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
Cohen, who has been behind the stock market rallies of companies such as GameStop and Bed, Bath and Beyond, started lobbying Alibaba in the second half of last year.
In 2021, Alibaba, which is valued at US$300bn, announced that it was adding $15bn of firepower to its share repurchase programme, which runs to the end of the fiscal year 2025.
However, Cohen is now pushing for the company to speed up the process.
Though it is unclear how influential Cohen has been in pushing Alibaba to take action given the size of his stake relative to the company's market value, his popularity among social media-savvy retail investors could force the company to pay greater attention to his demands to avoid being targeted by his followers, the Financial Times said.