GuShiio.com Article source: Cailian AI daily
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On Thursday, Apple and Google’s App Store in the United States lifted download restrictions on TikTok and re-launched the app. A few weeks ago, two platforms removed TikTok in accordance with relevant U.S. bans. After DeepSeek became popular around the world, domestic Internet and technology manufacturers accelerated the competition for AI talents. Following the actions related to Xiaomi and ByteDance,”Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” learned that Ali’s AI To C business has recently launched large-scale recruitment, with hundreds of open recruitment positions, concentrated on product and technology research and development positions related to AI models.
Recently, Ali has taken frequent actions in AI and cloud computing. After confirming cooperation with Apple’s mobile AI, Jack Ma has also made many appearances recently. Last week, after appearing in the office area of Ali Intelligent Information Business Group where Quark is located, he attended a private enterprise symposium in Beijing on February 17.
It is reported that Ali has recruited hundreds of external positions this time, of which AI technology and product research and development positions account for 90%. They are mainly distributed in the R & D direction of AI products and AI technology, and will focus on text and multimodal large models. Work related to cutting-edge technologies and applications such as AI Agents.
Xiaomi, Byte and Alibaba stage a battle for AI talents
At a time when the AI field is booming, talents have become a key resource for competition among various companies. Recently, the news that Xiaomi poached DeepSeek talented girl Luo Fuli has attracted widespread attention. Luo Fuli, an AI rising star born in the 1995 era, graduated from Beijing Normal University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and studied computer linguistics at Peking University with a master’s degree. His academic achievements have been remarkable. He has published 8 papers at the ACL International Summit Conference at one time, two of which were the first authors. The word sense disambiguation method and text style conversion framework proposed have caused a sensation in the industry.
Just yesterday, ByteDance also confirmed to a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that Wu Yonghui, a “Google Fellow” who has worked at Google for 17 years, has left Google and officially joined ByteDance. Wu Yonghui will serve as the head of basic research of Seed, a large model team at ByteDance, focusing on long-term research and exploration work such as basic research and exploration of large models and AI for science, and reporting to Liang Rupo, CEO of ByteDance.
DeepSeek has achieved a global sensation without showing advantages in funds and talents, which has shocked all major manufacturers. Liang Rupo said at the new staff meeting of ByteDance that the long-chain thinking model, one of the innovation points of DeepSeek R1, is not the first in the industry. After OpenAI released its long-chain thinking model in September last year and became a hot topic in the industry, Byte realized major changes in technology, but the follow-up speed was not enough. If it had paid attention to it in time, it would have a chance to realize it earlier. He proposed a key goal for 2025: pursuing the “smart” upper limit.
In contrast, Ali has not been soft in introducing AI talents. In early February, Xu Zhuhong, the world’s top artificial intelligence scientist and former vice president of Salesforce Group, became vice president of Alibaba Group, responsible for multimodal basic models and basic research and application solutions related to Agents for the AI To C business. Insiders revealed that Xu Zhuhong is currently preparing a top AI large model research team with a scale of more than 100 people to promote the transformation of cutting-edge scientific research results into practical application solutions.
Alibaba has been in the AI field for many years, but in the past it mainly concentrated on B-side business. The third-quarter 2024 financial report showed that Alibaba Cloud’s overall revenue was 29.61 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 7%, and adjusted EBITA profit reached 2.661 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 89%. Alibaba Cloud’s performance was driven by double-digit growth in its public cloud business, including an increase in the adoption of AI-related products. AI-related product revenue achieved triple-digit year-on-year growth for five consecutive quarters.
Since the end of last year, Ali has made efforts in the AI To C business, integrating Ali’s AI application “Tongyi” into the Ali Intelligent Information Business Group, and this department has shouldered the important responsibility of Ali AI To C. Just last week, Alibaba founder Jack Ma showed up and also appeared in Quark’s office area to greet employees.
Under the “AI-driven” strategy, Ali is fully committed to embracing technology through e-commerce
Recently, Ali also confirmed its cooperation with Apple to develop new AI functions for Apple’s iPhone users in China. In addition to mobile phones, Ali is also promoting the Tongyi series of large-scale models of floor-to-ceiling AI glasses, including signing a contract with consumer-grade AR brand Thunderbird Innovation RayNeo to provide exclusive customized technical support for its AI glasses. The Tmall Elf team is also working together with the Quark product team to explore new hardware directions such as AI glasses.
In terms of cloud infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud today announced the official opening of its Mexican data center. This is Alibaba Cloud’s first data center in Latin America and marks an important step in its entry into South America. In May last year, Alibaba Cloud announced a new round of global infrastructure expansion plans, which will invest in new data centers in Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea. Currently, Alibaba Cloud covers 87 availability zones in 29 regions around the world.
On February 20, Alibaba will announce its third-quarter results for fiscal year 2025. Morgan Stanley issued a report saying that it expects future capital expenditure plans and public cloud revenue prospects to be mentioned in the financial report. If Alibaba announces that it will increase AI-related investment, it will further increase new order expectations for the entire data center industry.
For Ali, the cooperation with Apple has been an important business breakthrough since it proposed the “AI-driven” strategy. Talking about the prospects of cooperation between Ali and Apple, relevant Countpoint analysts believe that Apple may tend to adopt a multi-supply model in China in the future and introduce more large-model service providers. However, as the pioneer of this cooperation, Ali will enjoy exclusive cooperation for a certain period of time. As the market continues to develop, companies such as Baidu, ByteDance, and DeepSeek may also become potential suppliers. “We predict that Apple Intelligence, which supports Chinese, and the first version to support non-English, will be officially released in 2025.”
Zhang Yi, CEO of Ai Media Consulting, told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that after cooperating with Apple, Ali’s AI products will have close and direct contact with C-end users and real application scenarios in the future. These are of great value to Ali’s future business transformation. In addition, Ali is not just an e-commerce platform, but also has a strong ecosystem behind it, such as Gaode, Entertainment, etc. If it can resonate with Apple’s relevant data, especially commercial cooperation in data resources, there will be huge imagination space.
Not only Ali, the Ant Group, which shares Ali’s roots, has also taken frequent actions recently. Recently, information from recruitment platforms shows that Ant Group is open to recruit positions such as customized intelligent humanoid robot systems and applications. Relevant persons from Ant Group said that Ant Group registered and established Ant Lingbo Technology Co., Ltd. last year, focusing on specific intelligent technology and product research and development. “Ant Group is continuing to deploy and increase investment in AI.”
