Alibaba has raked in $33.9 billion and counting in Singles Day sales, crushing last year's results

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Taylor Swift performs on the stage during the opening gala of 2019 Alibaba 11.11 Global Shopping Festival on November 10, 2019 in Shanghai, China.

• Alibaba's Singles Day isn't over yet but it's already crushing last year's sales results.
• As of Monday evening Beijing time, the online shopping giant had pulled in more than $33.9 billion in sales and counting. Last year, customers spent $30.8 billion in total over Singles Day.
• Alibaba's annual shopping extravaganza is equivalent to Black Friday or Cyber Monday in the US.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Singles Day isn't even over yet but Alibaba has already crushed last year's sales results and broken new records for the ecommerce giant.

As of Monday evening Bejing time, Alibaba recorded more than $33.9 billion in sales and counting, eclipsing last year's numbers where customers spent $30.8 billion total in 24 hours.

Complimentary Tech Event

Transform talent with learning that works

Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

In the first minute and eight seconds of this year's Singles Day, Alibaba said it had pulled in $1 billion in sales. After an hour, it hit $12 billion.

Alibaba's annual shopping extravaganza is equivalent to Black Friday or Cyber Monday in the US, though its frequently raked up sales bigger than all of these days combined.

Singles Day, which falls on November 11 each year, was originally created as a student holiday in China to celebrate single people but Alibaba transformed this into an online-shopping extravaganza in 2009.

In this way, its more akin to Amazon's Prime Day, which was also set up to offer deals to customers and ultimately, push sales growth. While Amazon did not release its sales results for Prime Day 2019, analysts estimated that it would have pulled in as much $5.8 billion.

Get the latest Alibaba stock price here.