- CEO Eddie Wu forms new group technology committee to centralize AI strategy and engineering leadership
- Tongyi LLM unit upgraded and senior executives reassigned as company enters full-scale AI acceleration phase
Alibaba Group is overhauling its AI leadership structure, creating a new top-level technology committee and reshuffling senior executives as the Chinese tech giant intensifies its push to compete in the global AI race.
In an internal letter dated April 8 and addressed to the group’s some 126,000 employees, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu announced the organizational changes, positioning AI development at the center of Alibaba’s next phase of development.
Wu’s messages also signaled a deeper consolidation of technical resources across the company.
The newly established group technology committee will be chaired by Wu and include senior executives Zhou Jingren, Wu Zeming and Li Feifei.
The body will coordinate core technology strategy across Alibaba’s businesses as AI becomes increasingly embedded in cloud computing, e-commerce and enterprise services.
Under the new structure, Zhou will serve as chief AI architect of the committee while also leading the upgraded Tongyi large-model division, formerly known as Tongyi Lab, underscoring Alibaba’s intention to move foundational model development closer to commercial deployment.
Li will become chief technology officer of Alibaba Cloud, overseeing technology development and AI cloud infrastructure, while Wu Zeming will focus on his role as Alibaba Group CTO, responsible for business technology platforms and AI inference systems.
The reshuffle also extends to operating units. Lei Yanqun will succeed Wu Zeming as chief executive of Taobao Flash Delivery, enabling Wu to concentrate on group-wide technology strategy and AI platform construction.
A pivotal year
Alibaba has described 2026 as a pivotal year for accelerating AI development. Recent initiatives include the creation of the Alibaba Token Hub (ATH) business group, built around generating, distributing and applying AI tokens, as well as continued model releases.
Its latest AI assistant, Qwen 3.6 Plus, recently ranked first globally in weekly large-model API calls on OpenRouter, according to company data.
