Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

author| Huang Yu Editor| Zhang Xiaoling

After stepping down as chairman of Alibaba Group, unexpectedly, Xiaoyao Zi Zhang Yong once again resigned as chairman of Alibaba Cloud and completely withdrew from Ali. At this moment, it has been 16 years since he joined Ali.

On September 10, the long-planned Alibaba Group management alternated, there were variables. When Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming took over the positions of chairman of the board of directors and CEO respectively as planned, Zhang Yong (flower name: Xiaoyao Zi), who was originally going to be all in Alibaba Cloud, suddenly chose to hang up the crown and leave.

Zhang Yong's departure was somewhat unexpected, but his departure did not affect Aliyun's footsteps. As Alibaba's most likely business segment to take the lead in independent listing, Alibaba Cloud's listing is still steadily advancing. Alibaba stressed in the announcement that night that Alibaba Cloud's spin-off plan will continue to be implemented.

Wu Yongming, the new CEO of Alibaba Group, was appointed to succeed Zhang Yong as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud's board of directors. However, this large probability is also a transitional arrangement. After all, Wu Yongming also serves as chairman of Taotian Group, director of local life group and international digital business group, and the ultimate leader of Alibaba Cloud. I believe it will be clear soon.

At this point, Feng Qingyang, Xiaoyao Zi, and the two Alibaba chairmen all chose to leave. Ali's new historical stage is also unfolding slowly.

1. The non-stop listing time returned to June 20, when Zhang Yong, who announced his resignation as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, pointed out in an internal letter that he would concentrate on being chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group full-time and "create a new Jianghu."

At that time, Ali announced the launch of the "1+6+N" organizational reform, personnel adjustment in full swing. Zhang Yong parachuted into Alibaba Cloud. At the critical moment when Alibaba Cloud was spun off and listed, it was widely believed that Zhang Yong personally took the helm to help the company quickly achieve its listing goal.

Ali obviously had a consensus on this arrangement. In the past six months, Zhang Yong has also focused on Alibaba Cloud's work. AI and large models are the only topics he talks about publicly. On August 23, Zhang Yong also appeared at a closed-door meeting of entrepreneurs in China's big model field led by Alibaba Cloud.

An Ali employee told Wall Street that Zhang Yong's departure was really unexpected, but he thought it was reasonable."This is his personal choice."

Zhang Yong, 51, has endured the most pressure in the past four years. Zhang Yong, as Ma Yun's successor, is the first to bear the brunt, whether it is business change, platform rectification or controversy surrounding Ma Yun.

About being CEO, Zhang Yong once joked that Ma Yun said that being CEO needs to be prepared to go to hell. Therefore, being CEO is a hard job. Ma Yun pushed him down to "hell." Zhang Yong took over as chairman of Alibaba Group in 2019, which is bound to suffer more pressure.

Now, after Ali split six, he chose to quit, perhaps the best choice.

For Zhang Yong's final departure, Alibaba gave him enough dignity to award him the honorary title of "Meritorious Ali" in Ali history.

Cai Chongxin, on behalf of Ali, spoke highly of and thanked Zhang Yong for his contribution and contribution to the company over the past 16 years.

However, in the future Alibaba cloud listing rapid travel, there will be less Zhang Yong figure.

According to Alibaba's signals, Alibaba Cloud's goal of completing a spin-off listing in the next 12 months will not change even if it changes coach.

Alibaba Cloud is not only regarded as the second growth curve by Alibaba, but also bears the heavy responsibility of recreating an Ali. Zhang Yong also said: "I hope Alibaba Cloud, as an independent company, can grow as big as today's Alibaba Group, or even bigger than it." "

Alibaba Cloud ranks first in domestic market share.

IDC, an industry research institution, released global cloud computing tracking data in 2022. The top three cloud manufacturers in the world are Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud in turn, among which Alibaba Cloud ranks third in the world with 6.2% share and first in China; Huawei Cloud, China Telecom, Tencent Cloud (Cloud), China Mobile and Baidu Cloud rank sixth to tenth in market share.

However, now the stock is at its peak and the competition among cloud service manufacturers is fierce. Although Alibaba Cloud is firmly in the top position of domestic cloud computing track, it is still inevitable that the revenue growth rate will also slow down significantly.

Since revenue growth hit a high of 175% in the first quarter of 2016, Alibaba Cloud began to fall year after year, and by fiscal year 2023, year-on-year growth dropped to single digits of 3.5%.

In order to compete for market share, head cloud service vendors such as Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud also launched a round of price war in the first half of this year.

In fact, Alibaba Cloud is accelerating to create more valuation space for listing, whether it's a price war, or adding large models, AI model community services, and open source and community ecology this year.

Only more imaginative business stories can Alibaba Cloud get more funds in the spin-off listing and accumulate chips for subsequent market competition.

2:12 And the LORD hath spoken unto them, and they have spoken unto him, saying, Let go of Ali, completely leave the fief Ali cloud, Zhang Yong became a veritable free son.

Ali's announcement, you can see Zhang Yong's determination, he did not miss Alibaba Cloud's listing dream, he has experienced a bigger scene than this, that is Alibaba listed that year, that is, the global Internet feast.

Sixteen years ago, Zhang Yong jumped from Shanda Network to Ali. In his later career, Zhang Yong showed his amazing business acumen and decisiveness more than once, and rose step by step until he took over the supreme scepter of Alibaba Group.

He created Double 11, a well-known global consumer carnival, led Tmall's rapid development to promote the tide of comprehensive Internet of brand enterprises, and at the same time made Ali successfully leap into the wireless era, leading the group to carry out layout in many fields and globally.

In 2015, Zhang Yong won the trust of Alibaba Group and Ma Yun, took over as CEO of Alibaba Group from Liu Zhaoxi, and officially stood at the second position of this Internet giant.

In the same year, Zhang Yong proposed agile organization,"Hope Ali is as agile as leopard,""Large and medium-sized platform, small foreground," which led the organization strategy of Internet factory for six years, and solved the efficiency problem of rapid platform development and rapid trial and error.

Ali has since entered a period of rapid progress, no longer just an e-commerce company, but gradually transformed into a digital economy driven by big data and featuring e-commerce, finance, logistics, cloud computing and entertainment. That was Ali's best day, with its market value rising from HK$560 billion in 2015 to an all-time high of HK$6 trillion in 2020.

Ma Yun highly affirmed Zhang Yong's ability and let Zhang Yong succeed him as chairman of Alibaba Group's board of directors after he retired in 2019.

However, since 2020, Ali Gao Guang has been shattered. Under many challenges such as platform supervision, fighting epidemic situation and consumption degradation, Alibaba has also fallen into the realistic dilemma of slowing down the growth of various businesses; in Alibaba's core e-commerce business, Zhang Yong once led the consumption upgrade, showing fatigue under the siege of more and more.

Until March this year, Ma Yun returned home, Ali started the largest organizational change in history "one split six," each business independent operation, will be split listed, Cai Chongxin and other Ali elders once again "out of the mountain," regain power; Ma Yun also proposed to return to Taobao, return to users, re-win small and medium-sized businesses.

In this process, Zhang Yong chose to abdicate step by step until he left.

He also continued to connect with Ali in a different way. According to Cai Chongxin's letter to all employees, Alibaba decided to invest US $1 billion to support Zhang Yong in setting up a future-oriented science and technology fund to help Ali create a better ecological environment for future science and technology layout.

In 16 years, Zhang Yong completed his historical mission in Ali, and Ali's "Xiaoyao Zi Era" also came to an end completely. From then on, he met again in Jianghu.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: All-weather Technology (ID: iawtmt)

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