Signage on the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. sales space on the Sensible China Expo in Chongqing, China, on Monday, Sept. 4, 2023.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Alibaba must be “person first” and “AI-driven,” new CEO Eddie Wu instructed staff on Tuesday, as he laid out the strategic priorities for the Chinese language tech large.
Wu, who’s simply three days into the job as Alibaba chief govt, referred to as for the e-commerce agency to “undertake a start-up mindset” as he appears to be like to steer the corporate again to development following one of the crucial tumultuous occasions in its 24-year historical past.
“Occasions are altering, and so should Alibaba! Because the world progresses, Alibaba must evolve even sooner!,” Wu stated in a letter to staff that was seen by CNBC.
Wu, certainly one of Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s shut confidants, began as CEO on Sept. 10, taking on from Daniel Zhang, who stepped down from the position to concentrate on heading up the cloud computing enterprise. Nevertheless, in a shock transfer, Zhang this week stop as CEO of the cloud enterprise with Wu taking on within the interim.
It comes months after Alibaba cut up its firm into six completely different enterprise teams, the largest shakeup in its historical past.
Wu stated Alibaba’s two essential strategic focuses will probably be “person first” and “AI-driven.” The corporate will “reinforce” its strategic investments in three areas.
The primary it calls “technology-driven web platforms.” Wu stated that Alibaba’s enterprise ought to “hunt down probably the most open and collaborative relationships,” even with opponents. This can be a completely different strategy from Alibaba which has tended to attempt to maintain customers inside its ecosystem of merchandise.
Wu additionally touted the necessity to spend money on synthetic intelligence. Alibaba’s cloud unit has tried to place itself as a frontrunner in AI inside China because it appears to be like to reignite development within the enterprise.
“Every of our companies generates large numbers of use circumstances; due to this fact, we should rework these use circumstances into purposes for AI know-how, driving breakthrough person expertise and enterprise fashions via know-how innovation,” Wu stated.
“If we do not sustain with the adjustments of the AI period, we will probably be displaced.”
Alibaba Cloud has its massive language mannequin referred to as Tongyi Qianwen, launched earlier this 12 months. An LLM is an AI mannequin skilled on enormous quantities of information and underpins chatbot purposes. It is the identical kind of mannequin that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is predicated on.
Wu additionally stated Alibaba must proceed to spend money on “globalization.”
Alibaba will even look to advertise youthful expertise. Inside the subsequent 4 years, the corporate will promote these born after 1985 and the Nineteen Nineties “to type the core of our enterprise administration groups,” Wu stated.