Activist investor Ryan Cohen bought a stake in Alibaba, urging him to buy back more shares.

CTOnews.com, January 17 (Xinhua) according to the Wall Street Journal, activist investor Ryan Cohen has bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and privately urged the company to speed up its share buyback and further increase the size of its share buyback program.

Cohen bought the shares in the second half of last year, according to people familiar with the matter. Cohen has contributed to the explosive rise of stocks such as Game Station GameStop.

CTOnews.com learned that although Cohen holds a small stake compared to Alibaba's market capitalization of nearly $300 billion (currently about 2.02 trillion yuan), he has a large following among retail investors, who often follow in his footsteps.

Cohen first contacted Alibaba's board in August last year to express his view that the company's shares were seriously undervalued and that he believed Alibaba could achieve double-digit sales growth and nearly 20 per cent free cash flow growth over the next five years, the person familiar with the matter said.