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Alibaba sees AI talent depart to start own business amid China’s unicorn boom
- Algorithm engineer Zhou Chang, who worked on Alibaba’s large language models, has decided to leave the firm and start his own AI business
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.
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.
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.
Still, Alibaba has emerged as one of one of the most prolific investors in China’s future AI champions. The company has backed all of the new AI tigers, including Beijing-based Baichuan, Moonshot AI and Zhipu AI, as well as Shanghai-based MiniMax, according to start-up data service ITJuzi.com.
Chinese social media powerhouse ByteDance, owner of short video platforms TikTok and Douyin, has also seen an exodus of AI talent.
Yang Hongxia, who was involved in LLM research and development at ByteDance, recently left the company to pursue her own AI projects, according to a report by 36Kr in May.
ByteDance rival Kuaishou Technology, meanwhile, saw its own tech leader for LLM projects, Fu Ruiji, leave the company to “prepare for an AI start-up project”, Chinese media outlet LingTai reported in the same month.
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