Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, set out his pitch to bring US businesses to his Chinese ecommerce platform on Tuesday in a speech that drew admiring gasps, laughter and applause from some of the most powerful figures on Wall Street.

Addressing the Economic Club of New York nine months after he pulled off a record-breaking $25bn New York listing, the former teacher who has become the face of the Chinese internet predicted that his company would overtake Walmart in sales this year.

But he reassured his audience that his 16-year-old company had not come to “invade America” by competing with domestic groups such as Amazon and eBay, emphasising that one of his goals is to bring small US businesses to “a China that is hungry to buy American products”.