Ma Yun, who has been low-key for many years, has recently appeared frequently.
On December 8th, Jack Ma suddenly appeared at the Ant Group’s campus and delivered a speech at the Alipay and Ant Group’s 20th anniversary event: ‘Today, I am not here for the past 20 years of Ant, but for the next 20 years of Ant.’
And more than ten days ago, Ma Yun’s figure appeared in the Alibaba Xixi Park. In the circulated picture, Ma Yun was dressed in casual clothes, holding coffee and taking a photo with several Alibaba employees.
On the 25th anniversary of Alibaba, although Jack Ma did not appear, he still posted on the company’s intranet, saying that ‘Alibaba believes in the power of the market and the value of innovation’ and ‘aspires to be a company that can survive for 102 years’.
In fact, as one of the founders of Alibaba and Ant Group, Ma Yun has rarely appeared in public since he stepped down as Chairman of the Alibaba Group Board in 2019. During this period, Alibaba and Ant Group have gone through many ups and downs, and have undergone several important changes and developments.
Afterwards, Jack Ma’s appearance and speech seemed to be closely related to the key Node of enterprise development.
In particular, in March 2023, Alibaba launched its largest-ever transformation, splitting the company and restructuring it into six business groups and multiple business companies, namely the “1+6+N” structure. In late May of the same year, Jack Ma convened a communication meeting with the heads of various businesses in the Taotian Group. One month later, Alibaba announced that Zhang Yong would step down as Chairman of the Board and CEO, and Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming would take over.
After being suspended from listing in 2020, Ant Group entered a 3-year rectification period and ended with fines and the closure of non-compliant businesses. Like Alibaba, Ant Group also reviewed its internal strategy and underwent a round of organizational changes last year.
Today, both companies have reorganized and set off again. And Jack Ma’s frequent appearances may be a signal for a new round of sprinting - looking to the future and starting anew.
AI will change everything
The timing of Jack Ma’s appearance is not only the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Ant Group, but also the occasion of Ant Group’s CEO change.
On December 8th, Ant Group Chairman and CEO Eric Jing announced through a company-wide message that Han Xinyi will officially take over as CEO of Ant Group on March 1, 2025. He will be responsible for all business and daily management work of Ant Group and report to Eric Jing and the board of directors.
Han Xinyi joined Ant Group in May 2014 and was just appointed as the CEO of Ant Group in March this year. It is understood that in the future, Jing Xiandong will focus on the work of Chairman of Ant Group and fully support Han Xinyi and the management team.
In the face of such a handover of time nodes between the old and the new, Jack Ma mentioned AI multiple times in this speech.
“Twenty years ago, when the Internet had just arrived, our generation was very fortunate. We seized the opportunity of the Internet era. Looking at it today, the changes that the AI era can bring in the next 20 years will exceed everyone’s imagination, because AI will be a greater era.” Jack Ma said.
He said that AI will change everything, but that does not mean AI will decide everything. Technology is important, but what really determines victory in the future is still what we do today, “What is truly valuable and unique for the upcoming era.”
In fact, as early as 2023, Ant Group’s chairman and CEO Jing Xiandong publicly announced the new three major strategies “AI Firs”, “Alipay Double Flywheel”, and “Accelerating Globalization” in the all-staff letter for the first time.
AI has been placed in the first place, and the Ant AI strategy is accelerating comprehensively.
It is understood that Ant Group has now deployed AI technologies in fields such as big models, knowledge graphs, operations research, graph learning, and trustworthy AI. Recently, Ant Group has acquired a start-up company called Borderless Technology, which focuses on the combination of large language models and reinforcement learning. Wu Yi, the founder of Borderless Technology, responded on social media that he has been invited to join Ant Group as the chief scientist of the newly established reinforcement learning laboratory. However, Borderless Technology will still maintain its independent operation status, and its original investors have chosen to exit.
Earlier, Ant Group Chairman and CEO Jing Xiandong revealed at the 2024 Digital China Construction Summit that in the next decade, Ant Group will invest more heavily in technological innovation, focusing on artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies, and opening up a new future for Ant Technology. At the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Jing Xiandong also revealed Ant’s plan to strengthen professional intelligent bodies and accelerate industrial applications.
Ma Yun has expressed his emphasis on AI technology not for the first time. In April of this year, Ma Yun expressed in a post titled ‘To Reform and To Innovate’ on Alibaba’s intranet that ‘the AI era has just arrived.’ At the end of November last year, Ma Yun spoke positively about the AI e-commerce opportunity on Alibaba’s intranet, saying ‘the AI e-commerce era has just begun, which is an opportunity and a challenge for everyone.’
Within the Alibaba Group, CEO Wu Yongming proposed that Aliyun adhere to “AI-driven, public cloud first”. Since the beginning of this year, Aliyun has announced price reductions multiple times and accelerated the pace of large model Open Source.
According to the latest quarterly performance of Alibaba Group, Alibaba Cloud’s quarterly revenue was 29.61 billion yuan, a rise of 7% compared to the previous year, and a rise of 11.5% compared to the previous quarter. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of rising growth for Alibaba Cloud. In this quarter, Alibaba Cloud’s adjusted EBITA profit reached 2.661 billion yuan, a rise of 89% compared to the previous year, surpassing analysts’ expectations of 2.493 billion yuan.
Starting anew towards the ‘future’
As the soul figure of Alibaba, every appearance and speech of Ma Yun continues to attract attention from the outside world. On the business radar, every public appearance of him seems to always lead Alibaba to stir up new waves.
In November, just a week before Jack Ma appeared at Alibaba’s new campus, Alibaba’s e-commerce empire just experienced a ‘merger’ major move.
On November 21st, Alibaba Group announced the establishment of Alibaba e-commerce business group, which fully integrates Taobao Tmall Group, Alibaba International Digital Business Group, 1688, idle fish and other e-commerce businesses. The new business group is headed by Jiang Fan as CEO, reporting to Wu Yongming. Based on the revenue of fiscal year 2024, the relevant scale of the plate is at least as high as 500 billion.
In November, Alibaba’s adjustment is also an adjustment for the future. At that time, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming said, “25-year-old Alibaba still needs to innovate with an entrepreneurial mentality,” and also pointed out “standing at a new starting point” and “seizing the opportunities of the AI era.”
It is not difficult to imagine that driving this integration is also related to the underlying logic emphasized by Ma Yun multiple times, which is the “future” - the competitive pattern of China and global e-commerce in the future.
20 years ago, Alibaba Group seized the opportunity of China’s e-commerce development and grew rapidly. In 1999, Jack Ma founded Alibaba in Hangzhou, which was the starting point of its development. Initially, Alibaba was mainly a B2B platform, but later it evolved into a digital economy entity covering multiple fields. During its development, Alibaba launched several important platforms and businesses, including Taobao, Alipay, Tmall, Alibaba Cloud, and Cainiao Network.
Now, from the latest quarterly financial report of Alibaba Group, it can be seen that the GMV of Taobao’s Double 11 has achieved a strong rise, and the number of buyers has reached a historical high. However, at the same time, the domestic e-commerce market has entered a phase of limited growth space. Alibaba’s overseas e-commerce business is still in a high-rise stage and needs further support to obtain more high-quality domestic supply.
The financial report for the second quarter of the 2025 fiscal year shows that Taotian Group, as the ‘basic plate’ of Alibaba, achieved a revenue of approximately 99 billion yuan, a rise of 1% compared to the same period last year; the second-largest revenue pillar, International Digital Business Group, generated a revenue of 31.672 billion yuan, a rise of 29% compared to the same period last year, which is the fastest-growing zone in Alibaba Group. However, its adjusted EBITA loss was 2.905 billion yuan, which is 7.5 times the loss amount in the same period last year.
Image source: Alibaba Group’s financial report for the second quarter of the 2025 fiscal year
This time, Jiang Fan returned to the spotlight, bearing the future of Alibaba’s e-commerce zone. On the one hand, he needs to make Taotian Group rise rapidly, and on the other hand, he needs to turn around the international digital business group.
Three years ago, Jiang Fan took over Alibaba International Digital Business and quickly conducted overseas research and business analysis, forming a pattern of two domestic cross-border businesses (AliExpress, International Station) and four overseas local businesses (Lazada, Miravia, Trendyol, Daraz), and launched full-service, semi-service, and self-operated models. The positioning of Alibaba’s overseas business gradually became clear, and later transformed from an important business zone to an independent international digital business group.
Now that Jiang Fan has been entrusted with another important task, from an external perspective, Alibaba still faces challenges from Pinduoduo, JD.com, and other domestic competitors, as well as international competitors such as SHEIN, TEMU under Pinduoduo, and the thriving TikTok Shop e-commerce platform.
At present, the ‘first fire’ of the new reform appears to be Alibaba’s exclusive e-commerce cooperation project for the 2025 Spring Festival Gala.
On December 2, the General Manager’s Office of China Media Group signed an exclusive e-commerce interactive platform cooperation project for the 2025 Year of the Snake Spring Festival Gala with Alibaba. This is Alibaba’s fourth appearance on the Spring Festival Gala, with previous appearances in 2018, 2020, and 2021.
Returning to the Spring Festival Gala stage once again means that Alibaba’s e-commerce will once again receive widespread brand exposure. At that time, whether Alibaba can revitalize itself with the help of this super IP of the Spring Festival Gala and release what kind of big moves to regain user traffic and market share, remains to be seen.
(Article Source: Time Weekly)
Source: Eastmoney.com
Author: Time Weekly
