Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming has added a new title.
On December 20th, Alibaba announced that Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group and Chairman of Taotian Group, will also serve as CEO of Taotian Group.
On that day, Alibaba Group Chairman Cai Chongxin announced the appointment through a letter to all members. He wrote in the letter, "A brand new era requires a new strategic and organizational system transformation. Facing the past, facing the future, and changing oneself, I believe that Alibaba, which has undergone this round of transformation, will complete its transformation."
From now on, Wu Yongming will concurrently serve as the CEO of Alibaba Group, Taotian Group, and Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group.
In March of this year, Alibaba launched the most important organizational change in the group's 24 year development history, with a huge structural change accompanied by a personnel reshuffle. On September 10th, Cai Chongxin issued a letter to all employees announcing that he had completed the handover of group management positions as planned on the same day, with him taking over the position of Chairman of the Group's Board of Directors and Wu Yongming serving as the CEO of the Group. In this major personnel change, Zhang Yong withdrew from the center of power and stepped down from his positions as Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud, both of which were held by Wu Yongming.
On the third day of officially taking over as CEO of Alibaba Group, on September 12th, Wu Yongming issued a letter to all employees, announcing the establishment of two strategic priorities: user first and AI driven. "The times are changing, Alibaba must change! The times are advancing, Alibaba must progress even more!" In the letter to all, Wu Yongming emphasized the importance of "change" multiple times.
Two months later, on November 16th, Wu Yongming participated in the financial report analyst conference for the first time as CEO of Alibaba. At this conference call, Wu Yongming gave a detailed introduction to Alibaba's future direction, important priorities, and implementation path, and officially announced that 1688, Xianyu, DingTalk, and Quark will be listed as the first batch of strategic innovation level businesses.
This is also the first time since Wu Yongming officially assumed the position of CEO of Alibaba Group that he has comprehensively elaborated on the strategic plan for Alibaba's new development stage.
"Wu Yongming took over as the CEO of Alibaba Group for three months, clarifying the strategic focus and priority choices of the entire group, making resolute choices around the main business, and comprehensively promoting the reform of the management team's youthfulness. According to Cai Chongxin's aforementioned letter, having Wu Yongming concurrently serve as the number one position on Alibaba Cloud and Taotian will help to lead Taotian's transformation with technological innovation.", It helps to ensure the unified command and high-intensity continuous investment of the group in the two strategic focuses of e-commerce and cloud.
Wu Yongming, who comes from a technical background, has always been considered a follower of Jack Ma. As the youngest "Eighteen Arhat" in Alibaba, Wu Yongming, born in 1975, is the No. 4 employee of Alibaba and the first programmer of Alibaba. In 2003, Jack Ma prepared to establish Taobao, and Wu Yongming was appointed as the Technical Director. In 2004, Alipay was born, and Wu Yongming was the chief technology officer of Alipay. In September 2008, Wu Yongming served as the Chief Technology Officer of Taobao, and since October 2011, he has been the head of Alibaba Group's search, advertising, and mobile business. From April 2015 to March 2020, Wu Yongming also served as the Chairman of Alibaba Health for five years.
According to sources cited by relevant media, one of Wu Yongming's strengths is his network resources. In the latest Alibaba architecture system "1+6+N", Wu Yongming has extraordinary personal relationships or deep friendships with CEOs of several independent subsidiaries.
With Wu Yongming truly taking over Taotian this time, the whereabouts of former CEO Dai Shan have also attracted attention.
According to Cai Chongxin's statement in the aforementioned letter, Dai Shan, as a member of Alibaba's 18 founding teams, has completed her mission in the process of Taotian Group's comprehensive return to users, return to the Internet, and return to Universal Taobao. Next, Dai Shan will assist in the establishment of Alibaba Group Asset Management Company, which is a new business function after Alibaba's transformation.
As the No. 11 employee, Dai Shan joined Alibaba in 1999. She is one of the "Eighteen Arhat". She once served as the senior vice president of human resources of Alibaba and Taobao, and successively served as the group's chief talent officer and chief customer service officer. At the end of 2021, Alibaba announced that Dai Shan would take over the management of Taobao and Tmall, integrating B2C retail business groups and B-series businesses to form the "China Digital Business Division". Later, it announced the complete merger of Tmall and Taobao's two business lines, which had been separated and merged for many years.
On November 16th, Alibaba disclosed its latest quarterly financial report (the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, corresponding to the third quarter of natural year 2023), which showed that Alibaba recorded a total of 224.79 billion yuan in revenue in the third quarter of this year, an 8.5% increase from the same period last year's revenue of 207.176 billion yuan. If divided according to the divisions split by Alibaba, Taotian Group remained the main source of revenue for Alibaba during the reporting period, contributing 97.654 billion yuan in revenue, accounting for 43.4% of the total revenue; The revenue of Cloud Intelligence Group is 27.648 billion yuan, accounting for 12.3% of the total revenue.