Driving the news: In just the past 12 months, Alibaba has teamed up with Kroger and Tiffany & Co, among other American companies, and has brought its payment system, Alipay, to thousands of U.S. stores. The latest partnership is with Office Depot — and the millions of small businesses which buy their office supplies there.

The big picture: It's increasingly difficult for small U.S. retailers to go up against giants like Amazon and Walmart, which have the cheapest prices and the fastest delivery options. Amazon's competitors, Alibaba among them, have happily turned this into a business opportunity, selling logistics and manufacturing services to the smaller companies that want to battle the behemoth.

Through the new deal, the 10 million small businesses that buy supplies at Office Depot will be able to tap Alibaba to set them up with Asian factories and call on Office Depot to help them with deliveries — all to cut their costs. They'll also be able to sell on Alibaba's site, which has more than 600 million active users.