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China’s Alibaba Group on Sunday announced that Daniel Zhang will step down from its cloud business, in a surprise move just two months after the company said he would leave his roles as group CEO and chairman to focus on the cloud unit.
Zhang had been scheduled to hand over the role of group CEO to Eddie Wu on Sunday and the letter said Wu will also take charge of the cloud business after Zhang’s departure.
“The board of our company expresses its deepest appreciation to Mr Zhang for his contributions to Alibaba Group over the past 16 years,” Alibaba said in a statement that simply announced that Wu would succeed Zhang in his roles at the cloud unit.
“Daniel has expressed his wish to transition away from his role as chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group,” the company said in the letter that signed by Joseph Tsai, an Alibaba co-founder who also took over the chairman role from Zhang as planned on Sunday.
“Following careful consideration, the Alibaba board respected and accepted Daniel’s decision and appointed Eddie as acting chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group, effectively immediately.”
Alibaba will invest $1 billion in a technology fund that Zhang would establish and has also gave Zhang an “emeritus” title, a first in its history.
“The fund will support Alibaba’s strategy of investing for future growth and continuing to develop our technology ecosystem.”