Alibaba CEO to step down; to be replaced by Jack Ma’s close confidant, Eddie Yongming Wu

In a surprise announcement on Tuesday, Alibaba Group said that current CEO Daniel Zhang will be stepping down later this year and be replaced by Jack Ma’s close confidant, Eddie Yongming Wu.

The news comes just a month after the Chinese tech giant announced plans to lay off 7% of its workforce in its cloud division ahead of the unit IPO and three months after plans to restructure the company into six separate business units, each headed by its own CEO and board of directors.

According to a CNBC report, Eddie Yongming Wu will assume the CEO role, while Joe Tsai will take on the position of chairman starting on September 10th. Both executives are considered trusted advisors to Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of the company. The move will free Zhang to focus on Alibaba’s cloud intelligence business.

Who is Eddie Wu?

Eddie Wu, one of the co-founders of Alibaba, has a long-standing history with the company dating back to 1999 when he initially joined as a technology director. His expertise lies in the core areas of e-commerce, monetization, and technology, making him an ideal candidate to oversee the entire Alibaba group.

Following Alibaba’s decision to split into six units, Wu was appointed as the chairman of the Taobao and Tmall Group, which were previously the two largest e-commerce services in China. In addition to this role, Wu has served as the chief technology officer for key businesses such as Taobao and Alipay, the mobile payments service operated by Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Group. He played a pivotal role in developing Alibaba’s monetization platform for Taobao and Tmall, as well as leading efforts to drive the adoption of the Taobao mobile app, propelling the company into the smartphone era.

The appointment of Eddie Wu as CEO does not come as a significant surprise, given his instrumental involvement in co-founding Alibaba and his key contributions to the development and monetization of Taobao and Alipay. Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC, an e-commerce tech and marketing firm specializing in helping foreign brands enter the Chinese market, highlighted that Wu’s elevation to CEO is a natural progression that underscores the enduring importance of e-commerce in Alibaba’s strategic roadmap.

“Eddie Wu’s appointment as CEO shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. He co-founded Alibaba and played a key role on both the technology development and monetization of Taobao and Alipay,” Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC, an e-commerce tech and marketing firm that helps foreign brands sell in China, told CNBC.

“His elevation to CEO of the group is a natural transition and signals the unswerving importance of e-commerce in the company’s roadmap,” Cooke added.

Alibaba was founded in April 1999 by Jack Ma. The former English teacher stepped down on his 55th birthday after amassing a $41.8 billion fortune — a trove surpassed in Asia only by India’s Mukesh Ambani, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The resilient Ma overcame many obstacles and challenges to become one of China’s richest men after he received more than a dozen rejections — including from KFC — before being hired as an English teacher. Ma applied ten times to Harvard Business School (HBS) and got rejected.