Will Tongyi divest Wu Jia from Alibaba Cloud or lead a team to integrate Ali AI To C business？
Recently, it was reported on the Internet that Ali’s AI application "Tongyi" was stripped from Alibaba Cloud. After adjustment, Tongyi App leveled the intelligent search product "Quark", while Tongyi Big Model will remain in Alibaba Cloud.
Time Finance learned from many sources that Tongyi will be spun off from Alibaba Cloud. It is reported that Tongyi App is in the charge of Wu Jia, Quark and Tongyi App are two brands developed in parallel by the intelligent information enterprise group, and there is no change in ali tong Yiyi Lab and its Tongyi big model.
It is understood that Wu Jia is currentlyVice President of the Group, President of Taotian User Platform, President of Ali Mama Business Department and President of Intelligent Information Business Group. After this year’s Tmall double 11 media communication meeting, Wu Jia also interviewed Time Finance and other media about the deployment of Taotian in double 11.
On November 21 this year, Wu Yongming, CEO of Ali Group, issued an email to establish an e-commerce business group, with Jiang Fan as CEO. Since the end of November, there have been rumors in the market that the management team of Taobao Tmall has ushered in fine-tuning. There are rumors that Wu Jia has been transferred to Alibaba Cloud, and there are rumors that he has returned to Ali Group and will focus on exploring the business applied in AI to C. However, at present, Wu Jia’s next move has not yet been made public.
According to public information, Wu Jia is one of the representatives of the "post-85 s" management of Ali Group. In 2010, Wu Jia joined Ali after graduation, during which she held several important positions.
In 2017, Wu Jia became the general manager of UC Business Department of Ali Entertainment; In 2019, Ali Innovation Business Group was established, and Wu Jia was responsible for the business development and product innovation of UC Division and Shuqi Division. In 2021, Ali established an intelligent information business group on the basis of innovative business groups, with Wu Jia as the general manager, and in the same year, he was promoted to the president of Alibaba Intelligent Information Business Group. During the period, Wu Jia led the team to incubate C-end products that are popular among young people, such as Quark Browser and Quark Network Disk.
At the end of last year, after a series of organizational restructuring in Alibaba, Wu Jia was appointed to be in charge of Taotian User Platform Division and Ali Mom Division.
Quark is actually a major representative of Ali’s AI ToC business. In 2016, Quark was hatched by UC browser, focusing on minimalist, efficient and ad-free browsers. In 2023, Quark expanded many intelligent tools, including "Quark Listening", "Quark Scanning King" and "AI Natural Language Search". In January of this year, the official version of Quark PC browser was launched.
Source: Screenshot from Quark official website
According to the statistics of the new list in November, Quark’s monthly visits exceeded 63 million. According to the latest data from PConline, Quark PC ranked first in the domestic computer AI application downloads in 2024. According to the report data released by CCID Research Institute, in the college entrance examination season in 2024, the use of quark AI search exceeded 100 million times, and the user scale reached a record high.
Tongyi App is an all-round AI assistant developed by Alibaba Cloud, which integrates many advanced AI technologies such as natural language processing, speech recognition and image generation. According to QuestMobile’s data, as of July, the monthly user scale of AI native application (APP) has exceeded 66.3 million, among which Tongyi ranks in the top five, with a monthly user scale of 4.24 million.
Source: Screenshot from Tongyi Web Edition
According to sources, after that, Alibaba Cloud focused more on To B business, and Tongyi App was classified as To C application in intelligent information business group. Although the latter was merged into the group, the underlying AI basic capability was still provided and supported by Alibaba Cloud.
This year is the first year of AI application, and many large model manufacturers are burying their heads in building AI applications. Tongyi APP has also created some AI application functions that are highly adaptable to young people. For example, the "National Stage" channel launched by Tongyi App in April allows photos to act and sing; In August, Tongyi Web Edition launched the "PPT Creation" function; In November, Tongyi launched the online code mode, and an application can be generated in a vernacular, including small, data charts, websites, resumes, etc.
This also echoes the organizational structure change of Alibaba Group last year. Since Wu Yongming took over as CEO of Ali Group in September last year, he has made clear the strategic focus and priority choice of the whole group, defined the core business and business strategy, and made firm choices around the main business. In November 2023, Ali announced the first batch of strategic innovative businesses-1688, idle fish, nail and quark-for young people and technology development trends, and made great efforts to promote the reform of young management team.
In the future, with the upgrade of Tongyi App to Quark-level business, Ali Intelligent Information Business Group may become an important export of Ali AI To C applications.