The new leader of Alibaba and its prized cloud and artificial intelligence unit told staff that the Chinese tech giant will prioritize artificial intelligence, user experience, and promoting a younger generation of leadership. So far, the stock market has shrugged.
Wu’s memo came during his third day as Alibaba’s CEO and the first since the company said he would also be taking over as leader of its cloud division, a role that former group CEO Daniel Zhang had been poised to take. The leadership shakeup doesn’t change plans to spin off the cloud and AI business to shareholders, the company has said—and presumably neither does a group re-focus on AI.
While Alibaba’s bread and butter remains Chinese e-commerce, cloud computing has emerged as a high-growth area for the company and the focus on AI has helped it benefit from the investor frenzy over the new technology in 2023. Reiterating the importance of AI shouldn’t hurt, even if it might raise eyebrows amid a slowdown in China’s economy that threatens consumer behavior at the heart of the business.
“I firmly believe that as long as we get back to our start-up mindset, not dwell on the past and not get stuck in our old ways, Alibaba will be rewarded with enormous growth and create even greater value in the area of AI,” Wu said.