The "Tongyi" application team is spun off from Alibaba Cloud and merged into Alibaba's Intelligent Information Business Group. | Exclusive from 36Kr.

Author | Deng Yongyi

Editor | Su Jianxun Yang Xuan

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"Intelligent Emergence" has learned from multiple independent sources that Ali's AI application "Tongyi" has recently been officially spun off from Alibaba Cloud and merged into Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group.

An informed source told "Intelligent Emergence" that this adjustment includes the product managers of Tongyi in the To C direction and the related engineering team, all of which have been adjusted to Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group. After the adjustment, the Tongyi PC and App team is at the same level as the intelligent search product "Quark", and the original Tongyi Laboratory remains within the Alibaba Cloud system.

This move can be seen as a step for Ali to sort out its internal AI To C applications.

Previously, Ali's large model family "Tongyi", including the application layer "Tongyi" App and the PC side, belonged to the Alibaba Cloud system. Among them, the Tongyi large model family was developed by Alibaba Cloud, which is a To B business and is not suitable for investing in the application development and promotion directly facing the To C market.

The gradual separation of the model team and the application team, rather than existing as a whole - this is also the only way for large models to move from the technical layer to the product.

Examples that can already be seen are: In the early stage of the development of ByteDance's AI business, the large model was divided into two teams, the underlying technology and the product application, and named "Seed" and "Flow"; Baidu's Wenxin large model and Wen Xiaoyan App also belong to the Technical Platform Group (TPG) and the Mobile Ecosystem Group (MEG) respectively.

The two teams also have obvious differences in responsibilities. The AI technical team focuses on the performance and parameters of the model; the application team needs to focus on the user experience, and more importantly, customer acquisition.

Take the investment flow of AI To C products as an example. In 2024, the AI application track ushered in fierce competition. "Intelligent Emergence" once reported in August The Investment Flow Battle of AI Applications: ByteDance's "Doubao" and startups led by Kimi increased their investment in channels such as Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, competing with each other to acquire more users.

However, previously, the Tongyi App did not have many aggressive actions in terms of growth and customer acquisition, and its product positioning is more inclined to an efficiency tool type. According to QuestMobile data, as of October 2024, the monthly visit volume of Tongyi's web page is approximately 10.12 million.

Ranking of Comprehensive AI Native Application Web Pages in October 2024 Source: QuestMobile

This adjustment of the "Tongyi" application can also be related to another piece of news recently.

After the Double Eleven every year, it is the node for Ali's routine organizational adjustment. At the end of November, as "Intelligent Emergence" understands, Wu Jia, the former head of Taobao User Business Division and Alibaba Mom, has returned to the Intelligent Information Business Group as the president, focusing on the exploration of AI To C direction business.

Wu Jia joined Ali in 2010 and has been working in Ali for 14 years. He is a native senior management talent of Ali. In 2017, he served as the general manager of Ali Entertainment UC Business Division. Until 2021, he served as the president of Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group. In December last year, Wu Jia was transferred to Taobao and also served as the president of Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group.

With the integration of the "Tongyi" application into Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group, Ali's AI applications in the To C field are also expected to usher in more linkages.

The major companies all hope to find a new growth curve through AI. Currently, the "super application" of the next era is still under exploration, but many existing businesses have ushered in a new wave of growth with the help of AI.

Another product under Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group, "Quark", is a typical example of "an old tree sprouting new shoots".

When it was first launched in 2016, Quark's main product form was a browser, and its business can be said to have been lukewarm. However, after the arrival of the generative AI wave, Quark became popular because of its positioning as an efficiency tool in learning and working scenarios.

Since 2023, Quark has started a series of new business attempts, launching several new products, including "Quark Scanner King App", "Health Assistant", "AI PPT", etc., gradually developing towards the direction of an one-stop AI office platform.

Image Source: Newrank

According to the statistics of Newrank in November, Quark's monthly visit volume exceeds 63 million, and Ali has also increased the investment in this product. In channels such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, the advertising materials recently placed by Quark are also concentrated in scenarios such as AI photo search questions, AI writing, AI academic search, etc., mainly targeting students and office workers.

It can be predicted that Ali's Intelligent Information Business Group is also expected to be an important export for Ali's AI To C applications.

Integration is the unified strategy of major companies for AI applications nowadays. Another comparable case is that this year Baidu transferred its cash cow business "Baidu Netdisk" from Baidu Intelligent Cloud Business to the Mobile Ecosystem Group (MEG), and it is uniformly managed by Wang Ying, Baidu's vice president and the head of the Wenku Business Division.

A senior person who once started a business in the field of network disks told "Intelligent Emergence": "Entry products such as network disks/browsers are themselves platforms for users to search for information and generate content, and are very suitable for carrying AI applications."

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