Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang to pass the torch and focus on cloud

Hours after rumors started circling in China about a possible stepdown of Alibaba’s chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang, the ecommerce behemoth confirmed midday on Tuesday that the executive will hand over the torch.

Zhang will be replaced by Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s current executive vice chairman, as chairman, and Eddie Wu, current chairman of Alibaba’s marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, as CEO and director of the board.

After the transition, Zhang will focus on leading Alibaba’s cloud intelligence group, which includes its cloud computing business, large language model endeavors and enterprise messenger Dingtalk. The cloud group was recently spun out as part of Alibaba’s pivotal reoganization.

More to come…