Alibaba sees AI talent depart to start own business amid China's unicorn boom
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An artificial intelligence (AI) expert is expected to soon depart Alibaba Group Holding and start his own business, according to sources and Chinese media reports, amid mainland China's growing investor interest in start-ups that could potentially become the next OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
Algorithm engineer Zhou Chang, who worked on the Tongyi Qianwen large language models (LLMs), has decided to leave Alibaba's cloud computing unit after seven years at the firm, according to two people familiar with the matter. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Zhou's departure was first reported on Wednesday by Chinese media 36Kr. The report said Zhang was going to start his own business focused on AI applications, without elaborating.
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Alibaba Cloud, which is responsible for AI operations at the Hangzhou-based e-commerce giant, and Zhou did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
China is home to 369 unicorns - start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion - with more than a quarter of these firms involved in artificial intelligence and semiconductors. Illustration: Shutterstock alt=China is home to 369 unicorns - start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion - with more than a quarter of these firms involved in artificial intelligence and semiconductors. Illustration: Shutterstock>
Zhou, who graduated with a PhD degree in computer software and theories from Peking University in 2017, joined Alibaba in the same year and played a leading role in the development of the Tongyi Qianwen LLMs that were released last year. LLMs are the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.
He was also a member of the team behind multimodal AI model M6, which was released by Alibaba in 2021. He reported to Zhou Jingren, chief technology officer at Alibaba Cloud.
Zhou's exit from Alibaba Cloud to start his own business reflects China's new unicorn boom that has so far yielded four "AI tigers" - Baichuan, Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI and MiniMax - each of which has raised billions of dollars from deep-pocketed investors.
Alibaba has also seen the departure of a number of top AI specialists since last year. Jia Yangqing, who previously led the computing platform department of Alibaba Cloud, reportedly left the company early last year to join a start-up focused on AI infrastructure.