Signage at the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. sales space at the Smart China Expo in Chongqing, China, on Monday, Sept. 4, 2023.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alibaba must be “consumer first” and “AI-driven,” new CEO Eddie Wu advised workers on Tuesday, as he laid out the strategic priorities for the Chinese tech giant.
Wu, who’s simply three days into the job as Alibaba chief government, referred to as for the e-commerce agency to “undertake a start-up mindset” as he appears to be like to steer the firm again to progress following one of the most tumultuous instances in its 24-year historical past.
“Times are altering, and so should Alibaba! As the world progresses, Alibaba must evolve even quicker!,” Wu mentioned in a letter to workers that was seen by CNBC.
Wu, one of Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s close confidants, began as CEO on Sept. 10, taking on from Daniel Zhang, who stepped down from the role to give attention to heading up the cloud computing enterprise. However, in a shock transfer, Zhang this week quit as CEO of the cloud business with Wu taking on in the interim.
It comes months after Alibaba split its company into six different business groups, the greatest shakeup in its historical past.
Wu mentioned Alibaba’s two predominant strategic focuses shall be “consumer first” and “AI-driven.” The firm will “reinforce” its strategic investments in three areas.
The first it calls “technology-driven web platforms.” Wu mentioned that Alibaba’s enterprise ought to “hunt down the most open and collaborative relationships,” even with rivals. This is a distinct strategy from Alibaba which has tended to attempt to keep customers inside its ecosystem of merchandise.
Wu additionally touted the want to speculate in synthetic intelligence. Alibaba’s cloud unit has tried to place itself as a pacesetter in AI inside China because it appears to be like to reignite progress in the enterprise.
“Each of our companies generates large numbers of use instances; due to this fact, we should rework these use instances into functions for AI know-how, driving breakthrough consumer expertise and enterprise fashions by means of know-how innovation,” Wu mentioned.
“If we do not keep up with the adjustments of the AI period, we shall be displaced.”
Alibaba Cloud has its giant language mannequin referred to as Tongyi Qianwen, released earlier this year. An LLM is an AI mannequin educated on enormous quantities of information and underpins chatbot functions. It’s the identical sort of mannequin that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is predicated on.
Wu additionally mentioned Alibaba must proceed to speculate in “globalization.”
Alibaba may also look to advertise youthful expertise. Within the subsequent 4 years, the firm will promote these born after 1985 and the Nineteen Nineties “to type the core of our enterprise administration groups,” Wu mentioned.