Potential Apple Partnership Drives Alibaba To New $100 High

A U.S. tech giant in bed with China's e-commerce behemoth? Wall Street is a big fan of that marriage.

On Monday at the WSJD global tech conference, both Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and Apple CEO Tim Cook praised their counterparts and talked hopefully about potential partnerships the two companies could pursue surrounding the new Apple Pay. Alibaba has its own online payments service, Alipay, which dominates the Chinese market.

"I hope we can do something together," said Ma. He also noted that Alibaba is having discussions about partnerships with film studios about content deals.

"We're going to talk about getting married later this week," said Cook. "I have the utmost respect for Jack. We love to partner with people who are wicked smart, that have flexible teams, that are product based and that push us. And we like to push them. Those partners we work the best with, and I think Jack has a company that is exactly like that. I love what he's done. I think he's a brilliant guy, I think he has brilliant people in the company. So if we can find some areas of common space, I love it."

No guarantees, of course, but investors like the potential match. Alibaba shares were up 2% in early trading on the day, cresting at $100 a piece for the first time. Apple shares also rose 0.8% to about $106.