Alibaba Group denied as "pure rumor" claims that Chief Scientist Zhou Jingren would resign, calling it an organized disinformation campaign. The denial follows a June 8 restructuring that merged the Tongyi Business Unit into Token Foundry, with Zhou reassigned to lead the AI Future Research Institute.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. denied as "pure rumor" claims that Chief Scientist Zhou Jingren would leave the company, calling the reports an organized disinformation campaign. Shares of the Hong Kong-listed stock rose 2.6% on the session.
"Zhou Jingren resignation is purely a rumor," an Alibaba Group spokesperson said. The company noted that individuals had organized and spread the false information online in recent days and urged the public not to disseminate it.
Zhou joined Alibaba in 2016 and rose to become one of the few executives with a purely technical background to enter the company's top decision-making body. He built the Tongyi large model team from scratch and led development of the Qwen series of AI models, which compete with offerings from Baidu's Ernie and Tencent's Hunyuan.
The denial follows a June 8 organizational restructuring in which Alibaba merged the Tongyi Business Unit into Token Foundry, a move aimed at streamlining its AI operations. Zhou was reassigned as Alibaba Chief Scientist, leading the newly formed AI Future Research Institute. Short selling in Alibaba stock totaled HK$1.11 billion, representing 13.6% of trading volume.
The reaffirmation of Zhou's role removes a key uncertainty around Alibaba's AI strategy at a time when Chinese technology companies are racing to commercialize large language models. Alibaba's cloud business, which offers the Tongyi model to enterprise customers, faces competition from Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent in China's rapidly expanding AI market. The company trades at roughly 10x forward earnings, a discount to US peers such as Microsoft at 33x, reflecting ongoing regulatory and competitive pressures.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
