The former CEO of DingTalk, Wu Zhao, has had his work area completely cleared out. Can Chen Yusen successfully take over the position?

Today, Alibaba announced a management adjustment. Wuzhao stepped down as the CEO of DingTalk, and Chen Yusen, born in 1992, took over. Currently, Wuzhao's workstation has been emptied, and he has also exited the DingTalk all - staff group.

However, his position in Alibaba still shows as the President of DingTalk, perhaps the information hasn't been updated yet.

As the founder of DingTalk, Wuzhao was originally highly expected by Alibaba. After his return in April 2025, he was once regarded as a tough general for Alibaba to seek breakthroughs in AI TO B, capable of handling difficult tasks.

At last year's press conference, Wuzhao claimed to be excited about this wave of AI. He said he would rebuild DingTalk with AI and planned to work for ten years after this return. At that time, hardly anyone doubted his words.

Unexpectedly, just over four hundred days later, he stepped down due to various reasons.

01

The Right and Wrong Before the Resignation

The news of Wuzhao's resignation as the CEO of DingTalk spread within DingTalk last night. Someone sent a "fireworks" emoji in the all - staff group of more than 1,400 people on DingTalk, which got hundreds of likes. After a while, the administrator withdrew the "fireworks" emoji.

But the situation in the group was out of control. More people sent "fireworks" one after another, and others continued to like them. Then the administrator withdrew them again.

This cycle repeated.

Interestingly, when the news of Wuzhao's resignation as the CEO caused a stir today, the all - staff group of thousands of people on DingTalk was surprisingly quiet. "The center of the typhoon is actually calm," an insider from DingTalk explained.

Three days before his resignation, on June 7th, Wuzhao's state began to be a bit abnormal. It was a Sunday morning, and Wuzhao called a team reporting meeting. A participant said that Wuzhao had just returned from the group that day. Usually energetic, he looked tired during the meeting.

There were two teams reporting that day. Wuzhao talked much less, no longer challenged details, and even seemed a bit absent - minded.

In the eyes of employees, Wuzhao was energetic and worked extremely hard. But on the other hand, he was used to forcing employees to work overtime and monitoring whether employees were at their workstations. His management methods were rather rough.

When Wuzhao first returned, he initiated an organizational adjustment to tighten the work state of employees. After that, there were a large number of both voluntary and involuntary resignations. The number of DingTalk employees decreased sharply from about 2,000 to more than 1,400 in just over half a year.

Another DingTalk insider told us that after Wuzhao's return, he was very crazy. An AI innovation project competition was quickly launched internally. He asked everyone to actively claim tasks and form small teams around different directions. Each group usually consisted of several people.

There were about twenty - odd groups at that time. They were each locked in meeting rooms or offices, having high - intensity discussions about their product ideas and implementation paths.

All the 20 - odd groups had equal opportunities. Whoever succeeded would get resources, manpower, and financial support. Since the second half of last year, several products emerged, including ONE, Dingtalk A1, and AI Hearing. These products were once grandly presented at the DingTalk press conference but later became controversial.

At first, the most eye - catching one was ONE, which Wuzhao regarded as the entrance to reconstruct DingTalk. At last year's press conference, Wuzhao placed ONE at the core of the entire AI - enabled DingTalk, but ONE later caused a lot of controversy.

On June 4th, a long resignation article of about 75,000 words titled "Inside DingTalk" spread from Alibaba's internal network to the external network. The author was Teng Yaxin (with the nickname "Yousu"), the product manager of DingTalk ONE. She reviewed the process of ONE from its project establishment, being highly expected at the DingTalk 8.0 press conference, with its DAU once reaching about 3 million, to the later withdrawal of its entrance and being replaced by the new project Wukong (an enterprise - level AI native work platform).

In early 2026, with the strategic contraction, the entire ONE team was merged into the Wukong project. The product was taken offline and no longer operated independently. Yousu attributed this to ONE being burdened with multiple missions, resulting in the product carrying too much information. The underlying reason was the unclear and wavering positioning by the management. The most obvious one was the attempt to serve both bosses and employees well.

The second ace product was the recording hardware Dingtalk A1, which was once the hottest - selling recording product in China. The 8 - person group originally in charge of Dingtalk A1 not only got the support of 20 people but also received a marketing budget of hundreds of millions.

However, the AI narrative changed rapidly later. Agent products represented by Lobster quickly became a new competitive narrative among large companies, and the new project Wukong became the protagonist of DingTalk. However, the highly - anticipated Wukong had an average user experience, and its reputation was not as good as Alibaba Cloud's coding product Qoder and Alibaba.com's intelligent agent Accio Work.

Yousu extended the problem from product failure to organizational management, strategic vacillation, product decision - making overly relying on the CEO's personal preference, high - pressure iteration, and internal strife within the team.

Her article spread widely and resonated with the public opinion in the Internet workplace. On June 8th, Ma Ruila, the vice - president of DingTalk and the person in charge of AI products, published an article titled "Outside DingTalk", confirming that he had left on May 15th. Ma Ruila said that he left because he increasingly found it difficult to confirm whether he was creating products or just exhausting his body to keep up with a constantly advancing rhythm.

He worked from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day, seven days a week, sleeping only 5 hours and then continuing the next day. He suffered from long - term lack of sleep. He responded that he felt "heartache" after reading "Inside DingTalk". Yousu said at the end of her article that although the Titanic sank, the sailors on board could still find the next job. Ma Ruila responded that only the surviving sailors could find the next job.

On June 10th, the Alibaba Partnership Committee posted an article on the internal network titled "Being Kind - hearted, Loyal, and Promoting Growth is the Essence of Alibaba Culture", officially responding to this incident. It criticized the relevant management methods of DingTalk as "not in line with Alibaba's culture" and emphasized respecting individuals and protecting creativity. Today, Alibaba announced a management adjustment, and Wuzhao stepped down.

Anyway, Wuzhao's contributions to DingTalk cannot be easily erased. In the early days, DingTalk started as an enterprise communication tool and grew into one of the most important To B products in the Alibaba system. Wuzhao was a key figure. He had a strong product will and implementation ability. It was precisely this strong - handed style that enabled DingTalk to quickly gain a foothold in the mobile office era.

However, in the AI era, the past logic may no longer work. Alibaba needs fresh blood to recreate a new DingTalk for the AI era.

02

Why Chen Yusen

The narrative of Chen Yusen, born in 1992, taking over as the CEO of DingTalk is considered a good thing by many. An AI - native organization should have young people who understand AI best to succeed, which is also the mainstream narrative of AI companies today.

After taking office, Chen Yusen will also become the "youngest division CEO" in Alibaba. However, what really needs attention in this appointment is not his youth but Chen Yusen's easily overlooked identity.

For DingTalk, the successor is the current vice - president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, and his growth system has always been within the Alibaba Cloud system. He is not an outsider who was parachuted in but someone who has been verified within the system and still holds the VP position, but needs to regain internal trust.

Chen Yusen founded the network security company Changting Technology at the age of 22, which was wholly acquired by Alibaba in 2019 and continued to operate independently after the acquisition. In 2025, he started a second - round business within Alibaba Cloud and developed the AI Agent product MuleRun. From being acquired, becoming the youngest VP, to incubating a star product internally, Chen Yusen has become an AI leader who has grown from within.

As early as June 2nd, Chen Yusen's MuleRun advanced its product to "enterprise - level AI collaboration". Nine days later, he became the new steward of DingTalk, the largest enterprise collaboration platform for Alibaba employees. This can almost be regarded as a set of Agent collaboration paradigms verified in the laboratory being directly applied to the main battlefield.

This adjustment can be understood as the methodology of Alibaba Cloud being horizontally input into DingTalk again.

DingTalk's organizational position has been changing in recent years. In the early days, it was a relatively independently - developed collaborative office product within Alibaba. In 2019, it was merged into the Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Business Group. In 2020, Alibaba further promoted the integration of "cloud and DingTalk", trying to turn DingTalk into the front - end entrance of Alibaba Cloud for enterprise customers. This meant that the group required DingTalk to give way to cloud computing, and that's why Wuzhao left DingTalk at that time.

In 2023, DingTalk became independent from the Alibaba Cloud system and returned to the framework of the Alibaba Group, emphasizing independent development and market - oriented operation.

In today's AI era, DingTalk is not just an office collaboration tool. It needs to take on a new role, which is to transform the technological capabilities of Alibaba Cloud in large models, AI Agents, and enterprise services into products and scenarios that enterprise customers can really use. With Wuzhao's personality, it seems difficult for him to accept such a "supporting" role.

So, Alibaba Cloud sent Chen Yusen, who developed MuleRun, to DingTalk.

When being interviewed by the media, Chen Yusen reviewed the entire product evolution process of MuleRun. After the internal test, he found that running the same prompt on his product and the leading products yielded similar results because they all relied on Claude's API capabilities. Chen Yusen believes that MuleRun should be a platform that continuously lowers the professional use threshold.

This kind of restraint while standing on the shoulders of giants is actually quite rare for a person with a technical geek background. But it is far from being a manifestation of product judgment.

"Lowering the threshold" has also become a high - priority expression in Chen Yusen's conversations. If this methodology is transferred to DingTalk, it points to a very specific product philosophy. The AI transformation of DingTalk should not be about piling up functions but making it usable for ordinary employees. As for the extent to which this idea can transform DingTalk's past product mentality of "for bosses", it still needs further observation.

It is worth mentioning that the connection between Chen Yusen and DingTalk had appeared before. In the interview, he mentioned that during the internal test, operation staff who knew nothing about technology could already use natural language to let the agent automatically operate the browser to conduct KOL background research and synchronize the results to DingTalk documents. A series of function updates of MuleRun were originally aimed at similar scenarios on DingTalk.

Now, from managing a small team of about 50 people in MuleRun to leading a mature organization of a completely different scale like DingTalk, Chen Yusen may need to prove more than just his organizational management ability. The commercialization goal of DingTalk was repeatedly mentioned in the two articles "Inside DingTalk" and "Outside DingTalk". Perhaps what DingTalk needs is not a revolution but to prove its growth ability.

And MuleRun itself has not yet achieved PMF. A technical executive waiting to be recognized, with a methodology still under verification, is going to fight a more complex battle. This is the biggest highlight and also the biggest mystery of this adjustment.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Baijing Laboratory". The authors are Wu Xun and Ma Shuye, and the editor is Liu Pei. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.