By Raffaele Huang

Alibaba Group Holding’s former chairman Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman and chief govt of its cloud enterprise unit on Sunday.
Eddie Wu, an Alibaba co-founder, has change into performing head of the cloud unit after Zhang’s departure, an Alibaba spokesperson mentioned in a press release.

Wu and Brooklyn Nets proprietor Joe Tsai, an in depth ally of fellow co-founder Jack Ma, additionally formally succeeded Zhang as Alibaba Group’s CEO and Chairman, respectively on Sunday, finishing a management reshuffle introduced in June.
The Chinese tech behemoth is present process a reorganization that may break itself into a number of unbiased firms, because it seeks to be extra nimble and makes an attempt to get its core e-commerce enterprise again on a progress monitor amid fierce competitors.
Alibaba is aiming for a public itemizing of its cloud unit, the second-largest enterprise by income after its home e-commerce division, by the spring of subsequent yr. The arm grew 4% within the April-June quarter, the slowest progress price among the many group’s six divisions. At the earnings name after the outcomes, Zhang blamed the decline in post-pandemic demand in addition to that from one among its prime prospects.
A separate administration staff will likely be appointed to move up the cloud unit, the corporate spokesperson mentioned.
Zhang, who turned CEO of the unit final yr, mentioned in June that he can be totally devoted to the cloud enterprise.
Zhang volunteered to resign from the cloud unit and can arrange a fund to help Alibaba’s expertise ecosystem and funding, Tsai mentioned in a letter despatched to Alibaba staff on Sunday that was seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Tsai mentioned within the letter that Alibaba plans to speculate $1 billion within the fund.
A former PricewaterhouseCoopers monetary marketing consultant, Zhang joined Alibaba in 2007 to steer the finance and operations of Taobao-Alibaba’s flagship marketplace-and turned the group’s chairman in 2019 when Ma stepped down.
Write to Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com