Alibaba responds to the departure of Qianwen's original head, Lin Junyang

On the morning of March 5, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming responded in an internal email to the news that Lin Junyang resigned. He said that the company will continue to follow its open-source model strategy and will keep increasing investment in AI research and development as well as efforts to attract outstanding talent.

In the early hours of March 4, Lin Junyang, the former leader of Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen large model, suddenly announced his resignation on a social media platform, drawing attention across the industry. It is understood that Lin Junyang is a key driving force behind Alibaba’s open-source AI models.

An insider at Alibaba said that the company has not changed its open-source strategy for Qianwen, nor has it used commercialized target evaluations such as daily active users (DAU) to assess the foundation model team. Lin Junyang’s resignation is not related to the above claims. The actual situation is that, as Qianwen was upgraded from a foundation model to an overall group strategy, the company believed it needed to recruit more “top technical talent” to increase the talent density of the foundation model team. In the process, adjustments were made to the scope of responsibilities and authority involving Lin Junyang. Lin Junyang did not accept the changes, and therefore submitted his resignation.

In his internal letter, Wu Yongming said the company has decided to approve Lin Junyang’s resignation and thanked Lin Junyang for his contributions in the role. Zhou Jingren, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, will continue to lead the Tongyi Laboratory in advancing the follow-up work.

At the same time, Alibaba will set up a foundation model support group, jointly coordinating group resources to support foundation model development with Eddie Wu Yongming, Zhou Jingren, and Wu Ze Ming, Group CTO of Alibaba.

“Without progress in technology, there is only retreat. Developing foundational large models is our key strategy for the future. We will continue to adhere to our open-source model strategy, while continuously increasing our R&D investment in the field of artificial intelligence and strengthening our efforts to attract outstanding talent. Let’s keep pushing forward together,” Wu Yongming said.