For a decade, AliExpress has operated in the State of Mexico, where it currently has at least two distribution centers that, according to SiiLA, total just under 30,000 square meters of gross leasable area. And now, seven months after announcing the first Alibaba Cloud data center in Querétaro, the Asian giant is back on the radar with expansion plans—through its logistics arm, Cainiao—in the State of Mexico.

The strategy is clear: use Mexico as a gateway to Latin America, stress-testing the scalability of its operations before fully taking on Amazon and Mercado Libre, which already occupy more than 600,000 and 1.3 million square meters of industrial space in the country, equivalent to roughly 40% of the space occupied by consumer-goods companies nationwide.

The competition the Chinese company faces helps explain its strategy. AliExpress's recent history reveals a pattern: when it enters markets where its footprint is modest—such as Mexico in 2015, or Poland and Russia in 2021—it starts with facilities under 50,000 square meters. And when it's ready to consolidate strategic nodes, it bets big, with assets over 100,000 square meters, as in Jakarta in 2023 or Seville in 2019.

Still, it's not yet clear when it will take the next step in Mexico. After breaking in with the Seller Center platform—which allows local businesses to sell on AliExpress while managing shipments with private operators—its roadmap points to large-scale logistics hubs and, ultimately, brick-and-mortar stores.

Meanwhile, its push in Mexico is not happening in isolation. The country is part of Alibaba's global ecosystem, whose sales grew 6% in the first quarter of 2025 versus 2024, driven far more by its international operations (29%) than by the Chinese market (3%). In that context, the 30,000 square meters it already operates in the State of Mexico are not marginal warehouses, but components of a system designed to scale entire markets.

Its international ambition, however, faces friction. Alibaba acknowledges that its global expansion carries the same Achilles' heel: protectionist policies and tax changes affecting e-commerce in the European Union, the United States, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam, which raise compliance costs and reduce competitiveness against local players. In Mexico, that tension is crystallizing in the still-pending "Federal E-commerce Law", which will set the playing field for the next decade.

Even so, after consolidating its empire in Asia and expanding its presence in the Middle East, the company is poised to grow more aggressively in North America and, from there, expand into Latin America. Today it controls more than 18.3 million square meters of industrial, office, retail and data-center assets worldwide—110% more than five years ago.

That growth follows a formula Alibaba has replicated wherever it aims to entrench itself: pairing consumer infrastructure with artificial-intelligence and cloud platforms. Mexico fits that logic, with Cainiao's logistics muscle in the country's center and its first data center in the Bajío.

But the challenge for Mexico and Latin America doesn't end with attracting data centers or building industrial facilities. The real test is whether these assets will remain leased territory for foreign powers or become platforms that also generate value, talent and regional autonomy. The future of commerce won't be purely physical or purely digital, but the intersection of both—and at that crossroad, the question isn't just who moves the parcels, but who writes the algorithms that decide what comes in, what goes out and what falls off the map.

To follow the evolution of the markets, tenants and projects that will define that frontier, visit SiiLA REsource or write to contacto@siila.com.mx.