June 3rd, per reports from the Star Market Daily, Alibaba Group Vice President and President of the Search & Recommendation Intelligent Products Division, Zhang Kaifu, has officially stepped down to launch his own startup. He’s building market-focused AI Digital Economists (real-time economic intelligence engines built for overseas Agents, giving AI systems direct access to real-world business and financial context).
As he put it in a recent social media post, predicting collective human behavior—especially market movements—is still one of the ultimate challenges AI hasn’t fully cracked yet. He feels the timing is perfect to make his move, and he’s actively looking for the right people to join him on this journey.
According to public records, Zhang Kaifu spent nearly a decade at Alibaba, acting as a key driver behind the company’s e-commerce and AI initiatives. He played a hands-on role in shaping Taobao’s merchant ecosystem and traffic operations, once earning a spot alongside Tang Xing, Yang Guang, and Liu Bo in the famed “Four Great Guardians of Taobao”.
2021, Zhang transitioned to Alibaba’s overseas digital commerce unit, leading its AliExpress global cross-border hub. By 2022, he stepped up to the rank of 阿里巴巴副总裁（M6）.
2025, under Jiang Fan’s leadership in Alibaba China E-commerce, the core Search & Recommendation Intelligent Products Division was formed, with Zhang Kaifu at the helm. For the past year-plus, Zhang’s main mission has been weaving together teams focused on search/recommendation algorithms, user modeling, merchant tools, and content creation. His goal? Sharpen the precision and efficiency of search and recommendation systems. He’s been diving deep into AI-to-C frontiers to continuously polish the user experience. Under his guidance, Alibaba e-commerce rolled out six standout products, including “AI All-Purpose Search”, “Pick It For Me” (an AI shopping assistant), and Pailitao (which uses AI to hunt down the best deals). On the AI-to-B side, he’s leveraged AI to supercharge ad performance and fuel merchant growth.
Zhang Kaifu’s most recent public appearance was at the 2025 Tmall Double 11 kickoff event, where he delivered a keynote titled “AI Reimagining Taobao”. He shared some impressive numbers, revealing how the platform now uses AI to deeply understand and organize over 20 billion items, driving double-digit gains in traffic matching efficiency. That breakdown includes a 20% jump in search relevance for complex queries, a 10% boost in recommendation feed clicks, and a 12% uplift in merchant ad ROI .
In earlyMarch, Alibaba Group CEOWu Yongming recently took the reins to establishAlibaba Token Hub（ATH）division, throwing full force behind large language models andAI-native apps. This fresh division rolls up five major units: Tongyi Lab,MaaSoperations, Qwen BU, Wukong BU, andAIinnovation division.
Following those massive organizational shifts at Alibaba, the Search & Recommendation Intelligent Products Division that Zhang helped build was split into two separate units: “Platform Users & Products” and “Intelligent Algorithms.” Meanwhile, the cross-functional “Future Innovation Division,” which handled multimodal projects, got folded entirely into the ATH division.
Zhang holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. in Management from INSEAD. Before joining Alibaba, he served as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.
This marks another high-profile departure of a core executive from Alibaba recently.
Earlier this year, on March 4th, Lin Junyang, head of Alibaba’s Qwen team, publicly announced his exit via social media. That same day, Yu Bowen, who oversaw post-training for Qwen, and Li Kaixin, a core contributor to Qwen 3.5/VL/Coder, both confirmed their own departures.
Alibaba GroupCEOWu Yongming addressed the situation in an internal memo on March 5th, confirming approval of Lin’s resignation and expressing gratitude for his past work. Alibaba Cloud CTO and Tongyi Lab director Zhou Jingren will step up to guide the lab moving forward. The company is also rolling out a dedicated support squad to pool enterprise resources for foundational model R&D.
In May, rumors circulated that Lin Junyang had pivoted to entrepreneurship, targeting world models and embodied AI. According to insiders, he’s already recruited several talent pieces from ByteDance, Tencent, and international companies. He’s currently raising capital at a valuation hovering around $20亿million (roughly 136 billion RMB) , with early conversations underway involving funds like Sequoia China and Gaorong Capital.
According to Alibaba Group’s latest quarterly report covering the period ending March 31st of 2026, the company raked in 2433.8 billion RMB in revenue, marking a 3% year-over-year increase. Stripping out the disposed retail and department store assets, organic revenue actually grew by 11%, signaling a solid recovery in core growth drivers. Net profit attributable to common shareholders hit 254.76 billion RMB, while GAAP net profit came in at 235.02 billion RMB—a massive 96% YoY jump. This surge was largely fueled by higher fair value gains on equity investments and a low base from last year’s asset disposal losses, which helped offset the profitability drag from heavy strategic spending.
Adjusted EBITA for the quarter took a sharp hit, plunging 84% year-over-year to 51.02 billion RMB, while operating profit swung to a loss of 8.48 billion RMB. Alibaba noted in the report that this margin compression stems from aggressive strategic bets on AI tech, instant retail, and customer experience—essentially the kind of short-term “growing pains” Wall Street has already priced in.
Stealing the show, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence reported quarterly revenue of 416.26 billion RMB, surging 38% YoY. Revenue from external customers sped up even further, hitting 40% growth—the fastest pace in nine straight quarters. Income tied to AI-related products reached 89.71 billion RMB, clocking its eleventh consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth. AI now accounts for over 30% of cloud external revenue, translating to an annualized run rate surpassing 358 billion RMB.
