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According to a WeChat post of Alibaba Group (HK9988), Zhang Yong will step down as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group on September 10 this year and will later serve as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, focusing on the development of Alibaba Cloud.

Joe Tsai will be the new chairman. Wu Yongming will become CEO of Alibaba Group and continue to serve as the chairman of Taotian Group.

Joe Tsai is currently executive vice chairman of Alibaba. From the establishment of the company in 1999 to 2013, he served as CFO of the group. In 2014, he led the company to go public in New York and then was responsible for strategic investment work. It is worth mentioning that he is also owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets.

Wu Yongming has served as the chief technology officer of several important businesses such as B2B, Taobao, and Alipay. He led the construction of the underlying technology architecture for related businesses.

According to reports, in late May this year, Jack Ma convened business leaders from Taotian Group for a small-scale communication meeting.

Ma said at the meeting that some of Alibaba’s successful methods may no longer be applicable to future businesses and should be changed quickly. He pointed out three directions for Taotian Group: returning to Taobao, returning to users, and returning to the Internet. In addition, Ma believes that Taotian should be further flattened in terms of organization.

Ma mentioned that it is Taobao’s opportunity instead of Tmall"s. He believes that Taotian Group is currently facing severe competition. He cited Nokia and Kodak as examples and believes that it only takes half a year to one year for a company from industry benchmarking to death. In this industry, it may be faster.