() — Alibaba is replacing Daniel Zhang as the company’s president and CEO as the Chinese tech giant undergoes the biggest shakeup in its history.
Joseph Tsai, Alibaba’s executive vice president and co-founder, will succeed Zhang as chairman, the company said Tuesday. Eddie Wu, chairman of e-commerce unit Taobao and Tmall Group, will succeed Zhang as chief executive.
Both appointments will take effect in September, with Zhang continuing to serve as chairman and CEO of Alibaba’s cloud unit.
This is the second time Alibaba has experienced a major executive leadership change in as few years after co-founder Jack Ma retired in 2019. And it comes just months after the company announced its biggest restructuring in 24 years.
The company said in March that it would be split into six separate units, including cloud, e-commerce, logistics, media and entertainment. Each unit is now overseen by its own CEO and board directors, and most of them can seek listings or fundraisers separately.
“This is the right time for it to transition, given the importance of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as it moves towards a full spin-off,” Zhang said in the announcement. He has been CEO of Alibaba since 2015.
He added that the rise of generative AI has opened up “exciting new opportunities” for the company’s cloud business.
Wu, also a co-founder of Alibaba, served as chief technology officer at the company’s inception in 1999.
“While our current transformation brings with it a new corporate governance and organizational structure, Alibaba’s mission remains unchanged,” he said.
Zhang was appointed by Alibaba as CEO in May 2015, eight years after joining the company. In 2019, he replaced Jack Ma as CEO, as Ma retired on his birthday and the company’s 20th anniversary as promised.
Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company in China, with more than 900 million active users a year on its Taobao and Tmall platforms. It also operates the largest digital payment and cloud computing platforms in the country.
But the company, along with its co-founder Ma, has been at the center of a broad crackdown by Beijing in recent years.
After Ma criticized Chinese financial regulators in a public speech in late 2020, Beijing called off the successful listing of Ant Group, the Alibaba subsidiary that owns Alipay, at the last minute. The cancellation marked the beginning of a regulatory onslaught against the country’s internet industry and private sector, during which Beijing imposed a record $2.8 billion fine on Alibaba Group for violating antitrust rules.
Since then, Ma had largely disappeared from the public eye and withdrawn further from his companies. He has reportedly spent more time abroad, including in Hong Kong and Japan, home to his friend and Alibaba investor, SoftBank CEO Masa Son.
But in March, he made a stunning public appearance in mainland China, days before Alibaba announced its major restructuring plan. His return was a symbolic move and likely a “planned media event” by Beijing intended to assuage private sector fears, analysts say.
Since then, Ma has appeared in public more frequently, with a more visible focus on research 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 at the University of Tokyo, according to a statement from the university.
