Joe Tsai

Alibaba's chairman describes an improving backdrop for the company. After the crackdown, China's regulatory environment has settled into a predictable 'new normal' where Alibaba knows the red lines and where to go, which he says makes a better operating environment even amid extreme e-commerce competition from five strong rivals including ByteDance. AI is already delivering: infusing AI into all consumer-facing apps (e-commerce, maps, food delivery) gives a massively better experience, grows the user base and is showing up as revenue uplift, while operations are more efficient so the company does not need to hire as many people (about 30% of code is AI-written, no AI layoffs announced). Since returning as chairman he has refocused the group on two core businesses, e-commerce and cloud computing with an AI element, and Alibaba's smaller open-source models (1.7B, 4B and 8B parameters for phones and laptops) are built for the fast adoption he sees in China, where the share of firms using AI went from about 8% to nearly 50%.