Alibaba, China's large multinational e-commerce company and owner of Aliexpress, announced a change in its board of directors. Daniel Zhang, who replaced company founder Jack Ma in 2019, will step down as of September and will make way for a new board of directors, as he himself announced during a press release published at the company webpage:
It has been an incredible honor and privilege to lead Alibaba Group as CEO over the past eight years and Chairman over the past four years. This is the right time for me to make a transition, given the importance of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as it progresses towards a full spin-off. I look forward to working closely with Joe and Eddie in the coming months to ensure a seamless transition. Looking ahead, I am committed to strengthening Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group's market leadership by making cloud computing and artificial intelligence more accessible for businesses of all sizes and industries as they continue their digital transformation. The emergence of generative AI has also opened up exciting new opportunities that Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group is well-positioned to capture.
Eddie Yongming and Joseph Tsai, new Alibaba executives
His position as CEO will now fall to Eddie Yongming Wu, one of the company's co-founders and a member of the Alibaba Partnership. The new CEO stated what it means to him to take on this position:
I am grateful for the trust of the Alibaba Group board of directors and am honored to succeed Daniel as Alibaba's CEO. Over the past 24 years, Alibaba has consistently innovated through evolution and breakthroughs from within, and each transformation has catalyzed new growth. While our current transformation brings in a new corporate organizational and governance structure, Alibaba's mission remains unchanged. We will continue to enable individuals and businesses to benefit from the digital economy and serve our customers with unique value proposition supported by innovation and our leading technology.
The position of president will be assumed by Joseph C. Tsai, who currently serves as executive vice president. He wanted to use the announcement of his new position to thank Daniel Zhang for all the work he had done since replacing the e-commerce giant's founder in 2019 and even before:
Daniel has made exceptional contributions to the development of Alibaba Group since joining the company in 2007, and he demonstrated extraordinary leadership in navigating unprecedented uncertainties affecting our business over the past few years. We believe there is no better leader than Daniel to steer Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group into the next chapter of its journey and future growth.
