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Jack Ma’s Alibaba Cloud visit a sign of support as tech giant accelerates adoption of AI

Ma, who has stepped down from all his corporate roles, remains a key shareholder and spiritual leader of the business empire he created

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Alibaba founder Jack Ma speaks about the significance of AI during his visit to Alibaba Cloud on Thursday. Credit: Handout
Ben Jiangin Beijing

Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma made a surprise appearance at Alibaba Cloud’s campus in Hangzhou on Thursday, in sign of support for the key business unit that is rolling out an ambitious plan to empower clients with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, according to employees and social media posts.

Ma, 60, visited the Hangzhou campus wearing a T-shirt celebrating the 15th anniversary of Alibaba Cloud and an employee badge with his Alibaba code name, Feng Qingyang, the sword master in a famous Chinese kung fu novel, according to social media posts. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Alibaba did not publicly disclose his agenda. Ma, who has stepped down from all his corporate roles, remains a key shareholder and spiritual leader of the business empire he created. In addition, Ma is seen as the face of the Chinese private sector, and his speeches from the early days of Alibaba remain widely available on the Chinese internet to inspire entrepreneurship.

Enthusiastic employees greeted Jack Ma when he showed up at Alibaba Cloud’s campus in Hangzhou on April 10, 2025. Photo: Handout
Enthusiastic employees greeted Jack Ma when he showed up at Alibaba Cloud’s campus in Hangzhou on April 10, 2025. Photo: Handout
Ma has been seen more frequently at Alibaba offices in recent months as the Chinese tech giant seeks to remake itself from an e-commerce operator to an AI powerhouse. At a speech in December 2024 to mark the 20th anniversary of Alipay, the payment service of Ant Group, Ma highlighted the importance of AI, saying that “changes brought [about] by AI in the next 20 years will go beyond everyone’s imagination, as AI will bring a greater era”.

In February, Ma joined a group of Chinese entrepreneurs and executives at a high-profile symposium in Beijing chaired by President Xi Jinping.

During Thursday’s visit, Ma was accompanied by Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu Yongming, who is in charge of the company’s AI roll-out. Alibaba Cloud is the largest cloud service provider in China, with more than one-third of the market. The unit is also responsible for the Qwen large language models, some of the most popular open-source AI models among global developers.

Alibaba Cloud is a key player in China when it comes to turning AI models into applications in different industries. Ma’s visit to the unit came one day after it unveiled its Blossom project, which aims to accelerate AI adoption by providing a package of infrastructure, AI models, data and other services to “millions of clients”.

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