- Alibaba CEO approved the resignation of its core AI chief as the Tongyi Lab's large model team undergoes extensive organizational restructuring.
- Alibaba will continue to increase AI R&D investment and talent acquisition efforts while adhering to its open-source strategy.
Alibaba's core artificial intelligence team is experiencing personnel turbulence, with CEO Eddie Wu officially approving the resignation of Qwen technical lead Lin Junyang on March 5.
This marks a major shakeup for Alibaba's large model team, with several core Qwen technical members, including post-training lead Yu Bowen, departing alongside Lin.
Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren will temporarily take over Tongyi Lab to advance subsequent research and development, while the company forms a foundational model support group comprised of executives to coordinate group resources, according to an internal memo on Thursday.
Wu reaffirmed in the memo that developing foundational large models remains a critical strategy, adding that Alibaba will continue to increase AI R&D investment and talent acquisition efforts while adhering to its open-source strategy.
The executive exodus is closely tied to recent organizational adjustments within Tongyi Lab, as Alibaba plans to split the Qwen team into multiple independent R&D units.
This fragmentation of the model team significantly reduced Lin's actual management scope, with Alibaba executives acknowledging during an internal meeting that there was insufficient communication regarding the organizational restructuring.
To fill the void left by top talent and address resource constraints, Alibaba has brought in former Google senior researcher Zhou Hao to lead crucial upcoming tasks, including the post-training of Qwen models.
Behind the personnel shifts lies Alibaba's strategic calculation to strike a balance between open-source models and commercial monetization, as the company attempts to assess the impact of open-sourcing on its model API sales revenue.
