Joseph Tsai, executive vice chairman and cofounder of Alibaba Group, will succeed Daniel Zhang as chairman, according to an announcement by the Chinese tech giant on Tuesday.
This is Alibaba’s second succession in just a few years after founder Jack Ma stepped away in 2019.
Eddie Wu, chairman of Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao and Tmall Group, will succeed Zhang as chief executive officer and replace him on the company’s board of directors. Both appointments will take effect on September 10, 2023, the company said.
Following the transition, Zhang will continue to serve as the chairman and CEO of Alibaba’s cloud unit.
“This is the right time for me to make a transition, given the importance of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as it progresses towards a full spin-off,” Zhang said in the announcement.
He added that the emergence of generative AI has opened up “exciting new opportunities” for the company’s cloud business.
Wu, also a cofounder of Alibaba, served as the technology director at the company’s inception in 1999.
“I am grateful for the trust of the Alibaba Group board of directors and am honored to succeed Daniel as Alibaba’s CEO,” he said.
“While our current transformation brings in a new corporate organizational and governance structure, Alibaba’s mission remains unchanged.”
The succession comes just a few months after the internet giant announced its biggest restructuring in its 24-year history.
The company would split into six separate units, including cloud, e-commerce, logistics, media and entertainment, according to a company statement in March. Each unit would be overseen by its own CEO and board directors, and most of them can pursue separate listings or fundraisings.
Zhang was appointed by Alibaba as CEO in May 2015, eight years after he joined the company. On September 10, 2019, he replaced Jack Ma as the executive chairman, as Ma retired on his birthday and the 20th anniversary of the company as he had promised.
Alibaba is China’s largest e-commerce company, boasting more than 900 million active users annually on its Taobao and Tmall platforms. It also operates the country’s biggest cloud computing and digital payment platforms.
But the company, along with its co-founder Ma, has been at the center of a sweeping crackdown by Beijing in recent years.
After Ma criticized Chinese financial regulators in a public speech in late 2020, Beijing called off the blockbuster IPO of Ant Group, the affiliate of Alibaba that owns Alipay, at the last minute. The cancellation marked the start of a regulatory onslaught against the country’s internet industry and the private sector, during which Beijing imposed a record fine of $2.8 billion on Alibaba Group for violating antitrust rules.
Since then, Ma had largely disappeared from public view and retreated further from his companies. He has reportedly spent more time overseas, including in Hong Kong and Japan, home to his friend and Alibaba investor, SoftBank CEO Masa Son.
But in March, he made a surprising public appearance in mainland China, days before Alibaba announced its major restructuring plan. His return was a symbolic move and probably a “planned media event” by Beijing intended to appease private sector fears, according to analysts.
Since then, Ma has shown up in public more frequently, with a more visible focus on researching and teaching. In April, the University of Hong Kong announced that Ma would join its business school for the next three years.
Last week, Ma gave his first lecture as a visiting professor to the University of Tokyo, according to a statement from the university.
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