Alibaba creates new “Token Hub” to centralise AI, names CEO Eddie Wu to lead

Reorganisation and leadership

Alibaba Group Holding (阿里巴巴集团) has reshuffled its artificial intelligence operations into a new top-level business group called the Alibaba Token Hub (ATH), and placed CEO Eddie Wu Yongming (吴永明) in charge. The move is meant to tighten coordination across the company’s sprawling AI efforts and to accelerate its push into what Alibaba describes as the emerging “token economy.” It has been reported that Wu framed ATH’s mission as “create tokens, deliver tokens and apply tokens” in an internal letter.

What ATH brings together

ATH reportedly folds together Alibaba’s core AI assets: Tongyi Laboratory (通义实验室), the developer of the Qwen family of foundation models; the company’s model-as-a-service operations; a Qwen unit focused on personal AI assistants; a Wukong unit to embed AI workflows into the Dingtalk (钉钉) workplace suite; and an AI Innovation unit for fast exploration of new applications and business models. Why a “Token Hub”? In Alibaba’s framing, a “token” is the basic unit of computation and output from large language models — text, images or code — and ATH is meant to standardise how those outputs are created and used across the group.

Strategic context and implications

The reshuffle places ATH alongside Alibaba Cloud and the company’s e-commerce divisions as part of a broader bet that integrated AI will drive new products and monetisation models. For Western readers, this comes amid a broader Sino‑US technology decoupling: export controls on advanced chips and heightened scrutiny of AI supply chains are prompting Chinese giants to consolidate in‑house AI stacks and pursue tokenised compute strategies. It has been reported that the reorganisation also signals Alibaba’s intention to compete more aggressively with domestic rivals such as Baidu and Tencent in foundational models and enterprise AI.

What to watch next

Investors and industry observers will watch how ATH interfaces with Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure and whether the token concept yields interoperable standards or remains an internal framing. The move tightens corporate control under the CEO at a time when Chinese tech groups are balancing rapid innovation with regulatory and geopolitical constraints. Disclosure: Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.