Alibaba chairman points out AI as a core growth engine for cloud and e-commerce businesses

Alibaba Group chairman Joe Tsai presented the company’s strategy roadmap for the next 3 to 5 years at an internal event held on May 10. He highlighted e-commerce as well as “Cloud + AI” (e-commerce + artificial intelligence) as the twin pillars for future growth. He said that he believed artificial intelligence would be the main driver in all business segments. Tsai acknowledged Alibaba’s strengths in e-commerce, but that the Chinese tech giant lacks a dominant role as a universal entry point to the internet. To combat this, the company will use AI to create new gateways for users and enhance shopping experiences via smarter recommendations, virtual assistants, and social commerce. Tsai believes that Alibaba Cloud will be a key component in deploying AI on a large scale. The company is investing heavily in large language models and computing infrastructure to support enterprise-wide change. Tsai highlighted AI initiatives on key platforms such as second-hand marketplace Xianyu and search engine Quark. He also highlighted AI initiatives on workplace tool DingTalk and B2B platform 1688.[Sina Finance (in Chinese)