Signage on the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. sales space on the Smart China Expo in Chongqing, China, on Monday, Sept. 4, 2023.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alibaba must be “user first” and “AI-driven,” new CEO Eddie Wu informed workers on Tuesday, as he laid out the strategic priorities for the Chinese tech big.
Wu, who’s simply three days into the job as Alibaba chief govt, known as for the e-commerce agency to “adopt a start-up mindset” as he appears to steer the corporate again to progress following one of the crucial tumultuous instances in its 24-year historical past.
“Times are changing, and so must Alibaba! As the world progresses, Alibaba needs to evolve even faster!,” Wu mentioned in a letter to workers that was seen by CNBC.
Wu, certainly one of Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s shut confidants, began as CEO on Sept. 10, taking up from Daniel Zhang, who stepped down from the position to concentrate on heading up the cloud computing enterprise. However, in a shock transfer, Zhang this week give up as CEO of the cloud enterprise with Wu taking up within the interim.
It comes months after Alibaba break up its firm into six completely different enterprise teams, the most important shakeup in its historical past.
Wu mentioned Alibaba’s two major strategic focuses might be “user first” and “AI-driven.” The firm will “reinforce” its strategic investments in three areas.
The first it calls “technology-driven internet platforms.” Wu mentioned that Alibaba’s enterprise ought to “seek out the most open and collaborative relationships,” even with rivals. This is a special strategy from Alibaba which has tended to attempt to maintain customers inside its ecosystem of merchandise.
Wu additionally touted the necessity to put money into synthetic intelligence. Alibaba’s cloud unit has tried to place itself as a pacesetter in AI inside China because it appears to reignite progress within the enterprise.
“Each of our businesses generates massive numbers of use cases; therefore, we must transform these use cases into applications for AI technology, driving breakthrough user experience and business models through technology innovation,” Wu mentioned.
“If we don’t keep up with the changes of the AI era, we will be displaced.”
Alibaba Cloud has its massive language mannequin known as Tongyi Qianwen, launched earlier this yr. An LLM is an AI mannequin educated on enormous quantities of information and underpins chatbot purposes. It’s the identical sort of mannequin that OpenAI’s ChatGPT relies on.
Wu additionally mentioned Alibaba must proceed to put money into “globalization.”
Alibaba will even look to advertise youthful expertise. Within the subsequent 4 years, the corporate will promote these born after 1985 and the Nineties “to form the core of our business management teams,” Wu mentioned.
Source: www.cnbc.com”