Jack Ma, who has been low-key for many years, has appeared more frequently recently.
On December 8, Ma Yun suddenly appeared in Ant Park and delivered a speech at the 20th anniversary activities of Alipay and Ant Group: "Today, I come not for ants in the past 20 years, but for ants in the future 20 years."
More than ten days ago, Jack Ma's figure appeared in the Alibaba Xixi Park. In the picture circulating online, Jack Ma is wearing casual clothes, holding coffee and taking a photo with several Alibaba employees.
On the occasion of Alibaba's 25th anniversary, although Jack Ma did not appear, he still posted on the company's intranet, stating that "Alibaba believes in the power of the market and the value of innovation" and "aspires to be a company that can survive for 102 years".
In fact, as one of the founders of Alibaba and Ant Group, Jack Ma has rarely appeared in public since stepping down as Chairman of Alibaba Group in 2019. During this period, Alibaba and Ant Group went through ups and downs, undergoing multiple important changes and developments.
Afterwards, Jack Ma's appearance and speeches seemed to be closely related to key nodes in the development of the enterprise.
Especially in March 2023, Alibaba launched its largest transformation in history, splitting the company and reorganizing it into six major business groups and multiple business companies, known as the "1+6+N" structure. In late May of the same year, Jack Ma convened a small-scale communication meeting with the business leaders of Taobao Group. A month later, Alibaba announced that Zhang Yong would step down as Chairman and CEO, and Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming would take over.
After being suspended from listing in 2020, Ant Group entered a three-year rectification period and ended up accepting fines and shutting down illegal businesses. Like Alibaba, Ant Group also streamlined its internal strategy and underwent a round of organizational changes last year.
Now, both companies have reorganized their attire and are back on the road. And Jack Ma's frequent appearances may be aimed at sounding the horn for a new round of sprint - facing the future and starting anew.
AI will change everything
The timing of Jack Ma's appearance is not only the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Ant Group, but also the time when Ant Group changed its CEO.
On December 8th, Ant Group Chairman and CEO Jing Xiandong announced through a staff letter that Han Xinyi will officially take over as CEO of Ant Group from March 1st, 2025, and will be fully responsible for Ant Group's various businesses and daily management work, reporting to Jing Xiandong and the board of directors.
Han Xinyi joined Ant Group in May 2014 and was appointed as the CEO of Ant Group in March of this year. It is understood that in the future, Jing Xiandong will focus on serving as the chairman of Ant Group and fully support Han Xinyi and the management team.
Faced with such a turning point between the old and the new, Jack Ma mentioned AI multiple times in this speech.
"When the Internet just came 20 years ago, our generation was lucky to seize the opportunity of the Internet era. From today's perspective, the AI era in the next 20 years will bring more changes than everyone imagined, because AI will be a greater era." Ma Yun said.
He said that AI will change everything, but that doesn't mean AI will decide everything. Technology is certainly important, but today will truly determine the outcome of the future. "We need to do something truly valuable and unique for this upcoming era
In fact, as early as 2023, Jing Xiandong, Chairman and CEO of Ant Group, disclosed the new three strategies "AI Firs", "Alipay dual flywheel" and "accelerating globalization" for the first time in the full member letter.
AI has been given top priority, and Ant's AI strategy is accelerating comprehensively.
It is reported that Ant Group has currently laid out AI technologies including big models, knowledge graphs, operations research optimization, graph learning, and trustworthy AI. Recently, Ant Group has acquired Frontier Technology, a startup focused on combining big language models with reinforcement learning. Wu Yi, the founder of Frontier Technology, responded on social media that he has been invited to join Ant Group as the chief scientist of the newly established reinforcement learning laboratory. However, Frontier Technology will continue to operate independently, while existing investors choose to withdraw.
Previously, Ant Group Chairman and CEO Jing Xiandong revealed at the 2024 Digital China Construction Summit that Ant Group will invest more in technological innovation in the next decade, focusing on artificial intelligence and data element technology, and opening up a new future for Ant Technology. At the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Jing Xiandong also revealed Ant's plan to develop professional intelligent agents to accelerate industrial applications.
This is not the first time that Jack Ma has expressed his emphasis on AI technology. In April of this year, when Jack Ma published a post titled "To Reform and Innovation" on Alibaba's intranet, he stated that "the AI era has just arrived". At the end of November last year, Jack Ma spoke on Alibaba's intranet and expressed optimism about the opportunities of AI e-commerce, saying, "The era of AI e-commerce has just begun, and it is both an opportunity and a challenge for everyone
Within Alibaba Group, CEO Wu Yongming proposed that Alibaba Cloud adheres to the principle of "AI driven, public cloud first". Since the beginning of this year, Alibaba Cloud has announced multiple price reductions and accelerated the pace of open sourcing large models.
According to Alibaba Group's latest quarterly performance, Alibaba Cloud's quarterly revenue was 29.61 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%, compared to 26.549 billion yuan in the previous quarter, a month on month increase of 11.5%. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that Alibaba Cloud has achieved an increase in growth rate. In this quarter, Alibaba Cloud's adjusted EBITA profit reached 2.661 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 89%, exceeding analysts' expectations of 2.493 billion yuan.
Starting anew towards the 'future'
As the soul figure of Alibaba, Jack Ma's every appearance and speech continue to attract attention from the outside world. On the radar of the business world, his every public appearance seems to always lead Alibaba to stir up new waves.
In November, just a week before Jack Ma's appearance in Alibaba's new park, Alibaba's e-commerce landscape had just undergone a major "merger" move.
On November 21st, Alibaba Group announced the establishment of the Alibaba E-commerce Business Group, which will comprehensively integrate Taobao Tmall Group, Alibaba International Digital Business Group, as well as e-commerce businesses such as 1688 and Xianyu. The new business group is led by Jiang Fan as CEO and reports to Wu Yongming. According to the revenue of the 2024 fiscal year, the related plate volume is at least 500 billion yuan.
The adjustment of Alibaba in November is also a future oriented adjustment. At that time, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming stated that "at the age of 25, Alibaba still needs to have an entrepreneurial attitude and constantly innovate", and also pointed out "standing at a new starting point" and "seizing the opportunities of the AI era".
It is not difficult to imagine that the underlying logic driving this integration is also related to the "future" that Jack Ma has repeatedly emphasized - the competitive landscape of China and global e-commerce in the future.
20 years ago, Alibaba Group seized the opportunity of China's e-commerce development and rapidly grew. In 1999, Jack Ma founded Alibaba in Hangzhou, which was the starting point of its development. At first, Alibaba was mainly a B2B platform, but later developed into a digital economy covering multiple fields. In its development, Alibaba has launched several important platforms and businesses, including Taobao, Alipay, Tmall, Alibaba Cloud, Cainiao Network, etc.
Now, from the latest quarterly financial report of Alibaba Group, it can be seen that Taotian Double 11 achieved strong GMV growth and the number of buyers reached a historical high. However, at the same time, domestic e-commerce has entered the era of stock, with limited incremental space. However, Alibaba's overseas e-commerce business is still in a high growth stage and needs further support from more high-quality domestic supply.
According to the financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, Taobao Group, as Alibaba's "base", achieved a revenue of approximately 99 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1%; The second largest revenue pillar, International Digital Business Group, generated a revenue of 31.672 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29%, making it the fastest-growing revenue segment within Alibaba Group. However, its adjusted EBITA loss was 2.905 billion yuan, which is 7.5 times the loss amount of the same period last year.
Source: Alibaba Group's Q2 Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2025
Jiang Fan has returned to the spotlight this time, shouldering the future of Alibaba's e-commerce sector. On the one hand, he aims to restore rapid growth to Taotian Group, and on the other hand, turn around losses for the international digital commerce group.
Three years ago, after taking over Alibaba International Digital Business, Jiang Fan quickly conducted research and organized business overseas, forming a pattern of 2 domestic cross-border businesses (AliExpress, International Station)+4 overseas local businesses (Lazada, Miravia, Trendyol, Daraz), and launched full custody, semi custody, and self operated models. Alibaba's overseas business positioning has gradually become clear, and it has since shifted from an important business sector to an independent international digital business group.
Now that Jiang Fan has been entrusted with a heavy responsibility, from an external perspective, Alibaba still faces challenges from Pinduoduo, JD.com, and other companies in China. In the international market, there are also competitors such as SHEIN, TEMU under Pinduoduo, and the booming TikTok Shop e-commerce platform.
At present, the "first spark" after the new transformation is Alibaba's exclusive e-commerce cooperation project for the 2025 Spring Festival Gala.
On December 2nd, the General Manager's Office of China Central Radio and Television signed an exclusive e-commerce interactive platform cooperation project with Alibaba for the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Snake 2025. This is the fourth time Alibaba has hosted the Spring Festival Gala, with the previous three being in 2018, 2020, and 2021.
Returning to the Spring Festival Gala stage again means that Alibaba e-commerce will once again receive a nationwide brand exposure. At that time, it remains to be seen whether Alibaba can use the super IP of the Spring Festival Gala to regain momentum, and what big moves it will use to regain user traffic and market share.
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