system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does Alibaba work?

And why is it worth so much money?
gpt
It's sort of like an eBay site except that it's intended to be used by retailers and other companies who are looking to buy products in bulk at wholesale rates.

Lots of suppliers on Alibaba have minimum order commitments (e.g. you must buy at least 50 units at a time). You, of course, get huge bulk discounts by doing this which means that you can make lots of money selling the products individually (if you are a retailer).

Sometimes there are no minimum purchase commitments, but this usually means you won't benefit from any major discounts if you only buy one unit.

But yeah, that's basically the gist of it. It's a site for suppliers to sell products (usually in bulk) to other companies which typically resell the products to customers, or incorporate the purchased items (e.g. electronic parts) into their own products.