Alibaba Group has announced a significant restructuring of its artificial intelligence operations, merging its Tongyi Large Model division with its Future Living Lab to create a new entity dubbed the 'Token Foundry.' In a move that signals the critical importance of AI to the group’s future, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu will take direct command of the new business unit. This centralization of power reflects a broader strategic shift within the Hangzhou-based tech giant as it moves past the experimental phase of generative AI development.
The reorganization also sees the appointment of Jingren Zhou, a key architect of the Qwen model series, as Alibaba’s Chief Scientist. Zhou will lead the newly established Alibaba AI Future Research Institute, a body dedicated to long-term breakthroughs in frontier technology. Meanwhile, veteran leaders like Zheng Bo will integrate their specialized teams into the Token Foundry, consolidating the company's engineering and product capabilities under a unified command structure.
This structural overhaul follows Alibaba's recent fiscal disclosures, which revealed that its AI business has officially entered a 'commercial return cycle.' Having successfully navigated the heavy initial investment phase, the company is now focused on scaling its revenue-generating capabilities. The latest Qwen-3.7 model has already demonstrated global competitiveness, ranking among the top three models worldwide for coding proficiency and maintaining a leading position within the Chinese domestic market.
By naming the new department 'Token Foundry,' Alibaba is aligning itself with an emerging industry consensus that views digital tokens as the primary currency of the AI era. Much like a semiconductor foundry produces physical chips, Alibaba's new unit is positioned to 'forge' the digital intelligence required by external developers and internal business lines. This pivot suggests that Alibaba intends to dominate the infrastructure layer of China’s AI economy, providing the computational building blocks for the next generation of software.