Alibaba CEO Takes Direct Control of New AI Business Unit

Alibaba Group has formed a new business unit called Token Foundry as part of the company’s reorganization plan to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts, Seeking Alpha reported Monday (June 8).

Token Foundry will bring together Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab and Future Life business units; will operate under the company’s recently established Alibaba Token Hub; and will be led directly by Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu, according to the report.

Alibaba Group did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The business group under which Token Foundry will operate, Alibaba Token Hub, is focused on the creation, delivery and application of AI tokens, as well as oversight of Alibaba’s model-as-a-service offering, the Qwen application, and enterprise AI products, the report said.

Alibaba also established an AI Future Research Institute, per the report.

Wu said during a May earnings call that AI accounts for a growing share of Alibaba Group’s revenue and that the technology will deliver a return on the substantial investment the company is making in AI infrastructure.

AI-related product revenue now accounts for 30% of the revenue of Alibaba’s Cloud Intelligence Group, and it will account for more than 50% in about a year, Wu said.

“We are at a pivotal inflection point in the evolution from conversational chatbots to autonomous AI agents, which is directly driving explosive growth across three core workload categories: training, inference and agent orchestration,” Wu said. “Against this backdrop, Alibaba’s AI has moved beyond the initial investment phase and progressed commercialization at scale.”

Alibaba announced its establishment of Alibaba Token Hub (ATH) in March, saying this business unit would include Tongyi Laboratory, which builds multimodal foundation models; MaaS Business Line, which builds technical infrastructure for AI; Qwen Business Unit, which builds a personal AI assistant; AI Innovation Business Unit, which explores new AI applications; and a newly created business unit called Wukong Business Unit that focuses on building an AI-native work platform for enterprises.

“I will lead ATH directly, with a mandate to drive strategic coordination across our AI businesses, embed AI deeply into how we work, and preserve the agility that lets us move fast,” Wu said at the time.

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