Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming take over, and Alibaba Group announces a reshuffle: Zhang Yong steps down in September to innovate | Business | Cai Chongxin

Today, Zhang Yong, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Holding Group, announced through a letter from all employees that Alibaba's self transformation is progressing smoothly and steadily. A new business cluster of 1+6+N has basically taken shape, and the boards of directors of various business groups have begun to operate. Multiple business listings and financing plans have also been launched. The Holding Group will mainly assume the role of innovation incubation headquarters, and the entire Alibaba is moving towards the future with a new attitude.

Zhang Yong also announced that the complete spin off of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group has been initiated, and it is currently in the most critical period of upward development, and must be fully invested. At the same time, in order to adapt to future development norms and requirements, it is not advisable for him to hold the positions of Chairman and CEO of both companies at the same time. With the approval of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Holdings Group, Zhang Yong will step down as Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Holdings Group on September 10 this year. Zhang Yong will serve as the Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group, focusing on the development of Alibaba Cloud, continuously enhancing its industry and global competitiveness, and enabling Alibaba Cloud to provide high-quality, secure, and convenient basic services for the digital upgrading of various industries, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

At the same time, with the approval of the board of directors of Alibaba Holding Group, Cai Chongxin, the executive vice chairman of the group, will serve as the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Holding Group; Wu Yongming has been appointed as the CEO of Alibaba Holding Group, while continuing to serve as the Chairman of Taotian Group.

In the future, Alibaba Holding Group will not only provide strong support and coordination for the development of various business groups, but also become a discoverer and promoter of new technologies, a hub for innovative business incubation, and create more value increment. Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming have corresponding perspectives, experience, influence, and appeal, making them the best choices to undertake the aforementioned responsibilities.

Cai Chongxin is currently the Executive Vice Chairman of Alibaba Group and has always played an important role in the birth and development of Alibaba. From its establishment in 1999 to 2013, he served as the CFO of the group and led the company to go public in New York in 2014. Afterwards, he was responsible for strategic investment work. His experience in globalization and insights into the macro environment provide strong support for Alibaba to further promote internationalization; His full understanding of Alibaba's development process, grasp of strategic direction, and inheritance of culture will help Alibaba Group continue to develop in the future.

Wu Yongming has a deep technical background. He once served as the chief technology officer of several important businesses such as B2B, Taobao, Alipay, and led the construction of the underlying technical architecture of related businesses; Led the creation of the group's core business, Alibaba Mama Platform, innovatively incubated mobile Taobao, and promoted the group's wireless technology, which has a strong appeal within the company. He has been keeping up with global cutting-edge technology trends for many years, which will further broaden Alibaba's technological vision and explore new directions where technology used to be the engine of development.

In addition, both Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming have years of investment and enterprise cultivation experience, successfully cultivating a large number of uniquely competitive technological innovation products and enterprises. In the future, Alibaba Holding Group will become an innovation incubator for the future, exploring, discovering, incubating, and cultivating more innovative businesses, reconstructing the company's development form and imagination space.

For 24 years, Alibaba has been innovating and iterating through self transformation, adjusting production relations, and maximizing productivity and innovation. And every proactive change towards the future has brought a pulse like new development to Alibaba. The biggest self transformation in history, which began in March, is making the entire organization more agile, decision-making processes shorter, and responses faster, forcing the entrepreneurial spirit to burst out, achieving the transformation from an Alibaba to a group of Alibaba, from a cloud of talented generals to a cloud of entrepreneurs.

What changes is the governance system, what remains unchanged is the original intention. We hope to create more customer value and social value in the digital economy era through our own transformation, so that more people can share the dividends of digital economy development and find their own opportunities and value.

Alibaba's new leader Cai Chongxin: Born in Huzhou, he once prevented SoftBank from taking control of Alibaba

When it comes to Alibaba, the vast majority of people think of Jack Ma. Jack Ma is indeed indispensable to the success of this enterprise. But besides him, there is also a very crucial figure behind this - Cai Chongxin.

Alibaba's new leader Cai Chongxin: once prevented SoftBank from taking control of Alibaba

Cai Chongxin's ancestral home is in Huzhou, Zhejiang. At the age of 13, he came to the United States alone and studied at Lawrence Well High School before attending Yale University. During his university years, Cai Chongxin's grades were equally excellent, with almost full marks in all subjects and excellent physical fitness. He almost always achieved first place every year. Later, he successfully obtained a Bachelor's degree in Economics and a Doctor's degree in Law. As soon as I graduated, I was favored by many enterprises. One of the companies directly offered him an annual salary of $700000, which was not many people in the 1990s who could earn such a high salary. So at that time, Cai Chongxin could definitely be considered a truly wealthy and handsome person.

In May 1999, a friend of Cai Chongxin suddenly said to him, "There is a particularly crazy young man named Jack Ma in Hangzhou. Do you want to meet him?" At that time, Cai Chongxin may have wanted to know how crazy this crazy person is, so he said, "Alright, there's a chance to meet him.". Later, under the recommendation of this friend, the two met in Hangzhou.

Jack Ma also brought Cai Chongxin to his somewhat awkward company, and upon arrival, Cai Chongxin was shocked by the scene before him. The office of Jack Ma Company was filled with more than 20 young people sitting in a dark place, with bed sheets covering the floor. They ate and lived together here, and no one would believe it was a company. If it were someone else, I would probably have turned around and left before entering the door. But Cai Chongxin not only went in to visit, but also patiently listened to Jack Ma talk about his project. In this process, he found that although the conditions here were very difficult, everyone's face was full of passion, as if Alibaba would succeed the next day when they opened their eyes. But in reality, Alibaba was just an inconspicuous small website at that time. Jack Ma tried to attract investment for this project, but was rejected 36 times. No one knows where the future of this project and the entire company lies. Surprisingly, after circling here, Cai Chongxin was not scared away and ultimately joined Jack Ma's team with determination. At that time, many people did not understand his decision because before joining Alibaba, Cai Chongxin had worked as a lawyer for three years, a legal advisor for one year, and a senior investment manager for four years. Both his education and work experience were very impressive. However, no matter how his family objected, Cai Chongxin finally gave up his annual salary of one million yuan and chose Alibaba, which has neither technology nor capital and only a monthly salary of 500 yuan, to become one of the "Eighteen Arhat". Later, when asked why he chose Alibaba, Cai Chongxin smiled and said that after seeing Jack Ma, he was deeply attracted by his personality charm. Of course, what impressed him was not only Jack Ma's eloquence, but also the passion of the young people's struggle and the prospects and future of this project.

After he joined, Alibaba gradually got back on track. Alibaba, which has just been established, cannot be considered a real company at all. Labor contracts, legal affairs, finance, and so on are all loopholes. After Cai Chongxin joined, he first helped the company draft corresponding labor contracts. Then he personally taught the employees knowledge of legal affairs, financial investment, and so on. From the definition of shares and equity to how to build shares and equity, he needed to explain every small issue bit by bit, and even Jack Ma had to learn from him. During this period, he drew up a very important contract, which was once called the "military rules" of Ali 18 Arhat. This contract closely ties the interests of the Eighteen Arhat, giving everyone the incentive to work together. Later, Jack Ma also publicly stated that without this contract agreement, it would be difficult for everyone's creative passion to last for 8 years. In the early days of Alibaba, Cai Chongxin was really both a father and a mother, having to help with everything and worrying about everything. If it weren't for his joining, Jack Ma's start would have been even more difficult, and Alibaba still doesn't know when it will truly get back on track.

In addition to these, Cai Chongxin also helped the company obtain the first installment of funds. Once, when chatting with a friend, he learned that Goldman Sachs had plans to enter the Chinese Internet industry. At that time, Alibaba had already spent half a million of its initial capital. It was so short of money that it could not even pay its salary, so it needed an investment. So after hearing this news, Cai Chongxin felt that the opportunity had come. Subsequently, I immediately contacted my friend at Goldman Sachs and talked to him about Alibaba's current development status and potential. Coupled with his previous experience at Goldman Sachs, I successfully convinced him and obtained $5 million in funding for Alibaba.

After receiving a huge investment from Goldman Sachs Group at that time, Alibaba was like riding a high-speed train. While developing rapidly, the scale of enterprises continues to expand, and their domestic and international reputation is also increasing. Sun Zhengyi, the founder of Softbank in Japan, is not only optimistic about the Internet industry, but also particularly optimistic about Alibaba. In 2000, an investment of 20 million US dollars was made. As is well known, SoftBank has been the largest shareholder of Alibaba for many years. At first, SoftBank founder Sun Zhengyi learned about Alibaba and his idea was to acquire the company. He offered $40 million in exchange for a 49% stake in Alibaba and participated in Alibaba's decision-making and management. Cai Chongxin stood up and strongly opposed it, so that SoftBank did not take away most of the equity.

In August 2005, a major event occurred at Alibaba, which was the acquisition of Yahoo China. This time, with the help of Cai Chongxin, the entire matter was basically coordinated and resolved by him personally. After the incident, Alibaba not only received $1 billion from Yahoo, but also acquired assets worth $700 million from Yahoo China. At the same time, this transaction has provided Alibaba with sufficient resources, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent construction of Taobao. Later, under the leadership of Cai Chongxin, Ali successively acquired many well-known Internet enterprises, such as Gaode, Yuantong, Youku, UC, and so on, creating today's huge Ali system. Behind every success of Alibaba, there is the figure of Cai Chongxin.

He not only provided advice and strategies for Alibaba's funding and management, but also put a lot of effort into talent recruitment for Shangcai Chongxin. In fact, Zhang Yong was the person introduced by Cai Chongxin at that time. In 2007, Alibaba went public in Hong Kong. In the same year, Cai Chongxin met Zhang Yong. During their conversation, Cai Chongxin felt that the young man in front of him was a rare talent. Later, he was recommended to Jack Ma, and thus Zhang Yong successfully entered Alibaba. Later on, he did not disappoint everyone's expectations. He not only founded the Double 11 Shopping Festival, but also created the Tmall brand, and later became the head of Alibaba.

Cai Chongxin is also slowly leaving Alibaba. As early as 2018, he resigned as a non-executive director of Alibaba Health Company, and in 2019, he stepped down as the head of Alibaba Group's Strategic Investment Department. Many of his work at Alibaba has been handed over to others.

After leaving Alibaba, Cai Chongxin is still pursuing his dreams. Since his student days, he has been passionate about sports, especially basketball. In 2018, he used one-third of his wealth to acquire a 49% stake in the Nets, and later became a member of the NBA China Board of Directors. In fact, when he invested in the Nets, it was considered a crazy move by many people, just like when he joined Alibaba. Because the situation with the Nets four years ago was considered quite bad by many people. But years have passed in a blink of an eye, and the Nets not only have a luxurious lineup, but also beautiful records, which have become one of the focuses of many basketball enthusiasts. In addition to basketball, Cai Chongxin has also devoted himself to charitable causes. He, like Jack Ma, focuses on charitable education. In China, he established the Cai Chongxin Public Welfare Foundation, mainly dedicated to three major fields: modern vocational education, youth physical education, and education poverty alleviation. In the past few years, he has helped thousands of students in impoverished areas and donated 67 million yuan to his hometown. Although Cai Chongxin's wealth has shrunk in the past two years, his footsteps in charity have never stopped.

Who is the new CEO of Alibaba, Wu Yongming? Perhaps the wealthiest programmer in history!

Alibaba announced today that Wu Yongming will serve as the CEO of Alibaba Holding Group and continue to serve as the Chairman of Taotian Group. Many people feel unfamiliar with Wu Yongming. However, within Alibaba, Wu Yongming is called a "secret weapon". He is the first generation programmer of Alibaba and has played an important role in the transformation of the group's mobile Internet.

Wu Yongming was previously the founder and chairman of Yuanjing Capital, an angel investor. Before becoming the founder of Yuanjing Capital, Wu Yongming was one of Alibaba's "Eighteen Arhats" and Ali's first programmer, known as "Dongxie". However, the people who work with him prefer to call him "Wu Ma".

Shortly after graduating from the computer department of Zhejiang University of Technology, Wu Yongming joined the first Internet company founded by Ma Yun in his early years: China Yellow Pages, which also started his indissoluble bond with Ali.

In 1999, Wu Yongming followed Jack Ma from Beijing to Hangzhou to founded Alibaba, becoming the first generation of programmers there; In 2003, the Taobao project was launched, and he was one of the seven generals personally selected by Jack Ma. In his years of fighting for Alibaba, Wu Yongming successively served as the technical director of Alipay, the technical director of Yahoo China P4P products and technology, the president of Yitao.com, the general manager of Alibaba Network Technology Co., Ltd., and the chairman of Alibaba Health's board of directors. With his personal wealth of 2 billion yuan accumulated during this period, he entered the Hurun Rich List and once became one of the "richest programmers in history".

Wu Yongming has been following the global trend of cutting-edge technology for many years, which will further broaden Alibaba's technological vision and explore a new direction where technology used to be the engine of development.

In addition, both Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming have years of investment and enterprise cultivation experience, successfully cultivating a large number of uniquely competitive technological innovation products and enterprises. In the future, Alibaba Holding Group will become an innovation incubator for the future, exploring, discovering, incubating, and cultivating more innovative businesses, reconstructing the company's development form and imagination space.

Four Questions on Alibaba: "Join the Club Again"

Since March, Alibaba's "biggest reform in 24 years" has received considerable attention from the outside world.

And even with the passing of the group's chairman and CEO, people are curious about Alibaba's new direction: why does Zhang Yong focus on Alibaba Cloud? Why did Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming take over? How is the overall progress of Alibaba's 1+6+N transformation currently? How will Alibaba Holding Group position itself in the future?

Why is Zhang Yong no longer serving as both Chairman and CEO of Alibaba and Alibaba Cloud?

Zhang Yong focuses on the development of Alibaba Cloud for two main reasons: firstly, as Alibaba Cloud will be completely spun off from Alibaba, the job adjustment is "to adapt to the needs and norms of future development.".

The second is that Alibaba Cloud is in the most critical period of upward development.

In terms of growth rate, Alibaba Cloud's growth rate has plummeted from 84% in Q4 2018 to 4% in Q3 2022, facing huge challenges. In May, Zhang Yong emphasized in a letter to Alibaba Cloud employees that Alibaba Cloud's second entrepreneurship has just begun. "Only with more entrepreneurial mindset and more responsibilities can we build a world-class technology company.".

With the launch of Alibaba Cloud's spin off and the introduction of external investment work, Zhang Yong dedicated himself to entering the market, which is conducive to the smooth and smooth transition of Alibaba Cloud from the critical stages of spin off, financing, and listing, as well as the subsequent enhancement of Alibaba Cloud's industry and global competitiveness.

Of course, an Alibaba insider also believes that this adjustment of the chairman and CEO precisely indicates the smooth progress of reforms in the past period of time. Since the reform in March, a new business cluster consisting of six major business groups and N companies has basically taken shape, and all six business groups have announced their respective board members and started substantive operation.

In recent months, Zhang Yong's activities have also confirmed his investment in Alibaba Cloud and AI. At an internal sharing meeting at Alibaba, Zhang Yong said, "Cloud is too important in strategy, and the time window is too precious. Both internationally and domestically, digital intelligence is in a period of rapid development, and it is very important to seize the opportunities of the times." On May 26th, during a discussion with major leaders in Tianjin, Zhang Yong talked about helping the development of local industries such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data. At the 2023 Siemens Digital Economy Forum on June 14th, Zhang Yong was highly optimistic about the future prospects of artificial intelligence. "Due to the development of generative AI technology, we see a completely different digital future, where all industries can be reshaped through AI," he said

As the successor of Jack Ma, Zhang Yong's image within Alibaba has always been diligent and approachable. After 8 years as CEO and nearly 4 years as Chairman, he explored the Taobao business model, founded Tmall and Double 11, and led Allin Wireless, making a milestone contribution to Alibaba.

"Most people will remember that Lao Xiao founded Tmall and achieved Double 11, but reviewing the difficult and critical moments of the company's development in the past few years, it is equally important for the company to stabilize the market for Lao Xiao," added an Alibaba insider.

Why are Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming appointed as the Chairman and CEO of the Holding Group?

The succession of Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming may seem fresh, but industry insiders are not surprised.

Firstly, although Cai Chongxin is low-key, he has never been far away from Alibaba. Previously served as the Executive Vice Chairman of the Group's Board of Directors; Wu Yongming has a strong technical background, and in the eyes of many old Ali people, "Wu Mama has always been Ali's secret weapon.".

There are traces of two people taking over. In May, Cai Chongxin was appointed as the Chairman of Cainiao Group and also served as a director of Taotian Group; Wu Yongming has been appointed as the Chairman of Taotian Group and also serves as a Director of Overseas Digital Business Group and Local Life Group. The positions of these two individuals have connected several core businesses of Alibaba and have inherent consistency with the positions of Chairman and CEO of the Holding Group.

For a large company like Alibaba, there are many factors to consider when choosing a chairman or CEO, but the most basic one is to serve the company's future development positioning.

From the official information released by Alibaba, the main positioning of Alibaba Holding Group is as follows: 1. Strong support and coordination for the development of various business groups; 2、 Discover and drive technological innovation; 3、 Innovation business incubation. In other words, from "managing specific business" to "managing future innovation". This puts higher demands on the technical vision, strategic investment ability, and global communication ability of company leaders.

Cai Chongxin's strengths lie in strategic investment, globalization background, and a strong understanding of Alibaba. In the early days of Alibaba, there were many "four pillars and eight pillars", including the equity system and partnership system, with his writing and figure. From the public introduction, he served as the CFO of the company from its establishment in 1999 to 2013, and led the company to go public in New York in 2014. Afterwards, he was responsible for strategic investment work. Currently, he also serves as a member of the investment committee of Alibaba Group and Ant Group.

From the perspective of the company's development direction, Alibaba is indeed facing a breakthrough. The core e-commerce business is facing fierce market competition, and Alibaba's market value has also shrunk by 70% from the highest of nearly 900 billion US dollars. Globalization has become an inevitable option for Alibaba to "roll back". From the official evaluation provided by Alibaba, it can be seen that "Cai Chongxin's globalization experience and insights into the macro environment are strong support for Alibaba to further promote internationalization." Under the leadership of Cai Chongxin, the direction of accelerating overseas expansion and globalization is determined.

Wu Yongming's strength lies in his technical background. He once served as the chief technology officer of B2B, Taobao, Alipay and other important businesses, leading the construction of the underlying technical architecture of related businesses; Led the creation of the group's core business, Alibaba Mama Platform, and innovatively incubated mobile Taobao, promoting the group's wireless transformation; Led investment and mergers and acquisitions such as UCweb and Gaode Map, and established Yuanjing Capital in 2015.

It is said that Wu Yongming, nicknamed "Wu Mama", is easy-going and has a strong appeal within the company. From Alibaba's positioning as an "innovation incubator", Wu Yongming's technological background will further broaden Alibaba's technological vision and better focus on the forefront.

Perhaps based on the above reasons, Alibaba officially stamped that "Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming have the corresponding vision, experience, influence, and appeal, and are the best choices to assume the above responsibilities.".

The overall progress of the 1+6+N transformation?

Since March, with Alibaba's reform, rumors such as "personnel adjustments" and "falling housing prices" have disrupted the market, and there have been many discussions on social media about the pain of reform. However, from the perspective of the overall market, it has remained stable and smooth.

Firstly, the boards of directors for each business have been established and put into substantive operation, and the CEO responsibility system under the leadership of the board has been implemented. This is seen as an important sign of Alibaba's truly independent operation of several core businesses, and the core team has begun to better think about how to face market issues.

Secondly, the middle and back-end capabilities have entered relevant business groups and companies in an orderly manner, and some shared services have begun to be provided in a professional service company model, such as the establishment of "Love Orange Technology". Personnel flow and business relief are relatively stable and orderly.

Once again, the work of splitting, financing, and listing is being carried out in an orderly manner. According to the news in May, Cloud Intelligence Group will be completely spun off and listed in the next 12 months, Hema's listing will be completed in the next 6 to 12 months, and Cainiao Group's listing plan will be completed in the next 12 to 18 months. It is understood that these works are all progressing.

In addition, according to an industry insider, this adjustment of the chairman and CEO can also be understood as a result of the smooth progress of the 1+6+N reform; Senior Alibaba personnel such as Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming are sitting on the sidelines to ensure a smooth closure of subsequent reforms.

What is the positioning of Alibaba Holding Group in the future?

According to official information, the holding group will mainly assume the role of innovation incubation headquarters.

In the eyes of some insiders, Alibaba has always had the ability to innovate and incubate, which has always been. Because the previous Alibaba Zoo was actually hatched in this way.

The biggest difference in the positioning of the group after the reform may lie in "focusing on small and large scale" and "focusing on the long-term". In mature tracks like the six major business groups, the holding group no longer directly manages operations, but the attention released by the group can be more focused on new tracks and technologies, solving long-term innovation and development propositions. This is the underlying logic of "one mature, one listed".

"To make an analogy, the main responsibility and orientation of the holding group should be to discover, incubate and cultivate the next Taobao, Tmall, Alipay and Alibaba Cloud. We should find historical opportunities in the new technology wave," said the insider.

Of course, as the parent company, Alibaba remains a highly influential and appealing base. At the same time, there will inevitably be collaboration and collaboration among various business groups themselves, albeit in a more market-oriented manner.