Alibaba Sets Up New Task Force, Led By Ceo Eddie Wu, To Focus On Ai Model Development

Alibaba Group Holding is forming a dedicated internal task force headed by CEO Eddie Wu Yongming in a bid to funnel greater resources into its foundational AI model development efforts.

On Thursday, Wu said in a letter to members of the company’s artificial intelligence research lab Tongyi that the task force would “jointly coordinate group-wide resources to accelerate foundational model development”.

“In technology, standing still means falling behind,” Wu said in the letter, which was provided to the South China Morning Post by Alibaba, owner of the SCMP. “Advancing foundation models is a core strategic priority for our future.”

The task force will comprise Eddie Wu; Zhou Jingren, CTO of Alibaba Cloud; and Wu Zeming, head of the firm’s food delivery business.

The letter comes a day after the resignation of Lin Junyang, the technical lead for Alibaba’s flagship Qwen foundational models, which he announced on X, sending shock waves through the global open-source AI community.

The logo for Qwen is displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Shutterstock Images

Lin’s sudden departure, along with recent departures of other senior technical figures, has sparked intense speculation about the future of Alibaba’s AI model development, including whether the Hangzhou-based tech giant will continue open-sourcing its models.

However, Wu affirmed in his letter that Alibaba would “uphold our open-source model strategy”, with additional commitments to scale up investment in AI research and development and continue to recruit top talent.

The renewed commitments come after the Tongyi team held an “emergency” meeting with senior leadership on Wednesday afternoon, where Alibaba executives promised greater support for AI model development, including providing the necessary computational power and expanding the research team, a source familiar with the discussions said.

The company has been moving to streamline its commercial AI strategy by integrating its growing suite of products, which now includes a flagship AI consumer app and AI devices, under one organisational umbrella.

Alibaba also recently recruited former Google DeepMind senior research scientist Zhou Hao, who will head AI model post-training research, the SCMP reported on Wednesday.

In his letter, Wu thanked Lin for his contributions.