HONG KONG – The former CEO of Alibaba, Daniel Zhang, resigned as head of its cloud computing unit Monday in a surprise move because the Chinese e-commerce empire wraps up a leadership reshuffle.
Alibaba stated it’ll make investments $1 billion in a era fund Zhang will determine to reinforce the company’s methods for long run expansion.
Zhang stepped down at the similar day he gave up his roles as Alibaba’s CEO and chairman.
In a submitting to the Hong Kong inventory alternate, Alibaba stated that Eddie Wu, its new CEO, may even head its cloud unit. Wu and Alibaba’s new chairman Joseph Tsai assumed their new roles by means of Monday, with Alibaba announcing it has “completed its leadership transition.”
Alibaba expressed its “deepest appreciation” to Zhang for his contributions to the corporate during the last 16 years.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong inventory value used to be down 3.6% Monday following the announcement.
In an inner letter dated Sunday and considered by means of the AP, Tsai wrote that Zhang had “expressed his wish to transition away from his role” as leader of the cloud business, and the Alibaba board had “respected and accepted Daniel’s decision.”
“Daniel will continue to contribute to Alibaba by channeling his expertise differently,” Tsai wrote.
Alibaba has been restructuring itself into six business devices with the purpose of ultimately spinning maximum of them off and record them to maximise shareholder returns.
In May, the corporate stated it aimed for its cloud unit to be indexed throughout the subsequent one year. It reaffirmed that plan on Monday.
Zhang joined Alibaba in 2007 and is understood for developing the corporate’s annual Singles Day on-line buying groceries extravaganza. In 2015, he took over from co-founder Jack Ma as Alibaba’s CEO. In 2019 he succeeded Ma as chairman.