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On Thursday, Apple and Google App Stores in the United States relaxed the download restrictions on TikTok and re-listed the app. A few weeks ago, the two platforms removed TikTok under relevant US bans. After DeepSeek became popular all over 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 Alibaba's AI To C business has recently launched large-scale personnel recruitment, with hundreds of open recruitment positions, focusing on the research and development of products and technologies related to AI models. post.

Ali has been making frequent moves in AI and cloud computing recently. After confirming its cooperation with Apple's mobile phone AI, Jack Ma has also made many appearances recently. After appearing in the office area of ​​the Alibaba Intelligent Information Business Group where Quark is located last week, he attended a private enterprise symposium in Beijing on February 17.

It is reported that Alibaba has recruited hundreds of positions, of which 90% of the positions in AI technology and product research and development, mainly distributed in the direction of AI products and AI technology research and development, and will focus on In the work related to cutting-edge technologies and applications such as text, multimodal large models, and AI Agent.

Xiaomi, Byte and Alibaba staged a battle for AI talents

At the moment when the AI ​​field is booming, talent has become a key resource for competition among various companies. Recently, the news that Xiaomi poached DeepSeek's genius girl Luo Fuli has attracted widespread attention. Luo Fuli, a post-95 AI star, graduated from the computer science department of Beijing Normal University and studied in the computer science department of Peking University. He has outstanding academic achievements and published 8 papers at one time at the International Top Conference ACL, 2 of which are the first authors. The proposed word meaning disambiguation method and text style conversion framework have caused a sensation in the industry.

Just yesterday, ByteDance also confirmed to the reporter of "Science and Innovation Board Daily" that Wu Yonghui, the "Google Fellow" who had 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, the big model team at ByteDance, focusing on long-term research and exploration such as large model basic research and exploration, and report it to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo.

DeepSeek achieved a global sensational effect while capital and talent did not show its advantages, which shocked all major manufacturers. Liang Rubo said at ByteDance's new member meeting that the long-chain thinking model, one of the innovative points of DeepSeek R1, is not the first in the industry. After OpenAI released the long-chain thinking model in September last year and became a hot topic in the industry, Byte realizes major changes in technology, but the follow-up speed is not enough. If you pay attention to it in time, you will have the opportunity to implement it earlier. He proposed the key items for 2025Standard: Pursuing the upper limit of "intelligence".

In contrast, Alibaba has always been ruthless in introducing AI talents. In early February, Xu Zhuhong, a world-leading artificial intelligence scientist and former vice president of Salesforce Group, became vice president of Alibaba Group, responsible for the multimodal basic model of AI To C business and Agents-related basic research and application solutions. Insiders revealed that Xu Zhuhong is currently preparing a top AI big 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 has mainly focused on B-side business. According to the third quarter financial report of 2024, 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 is driven by double-digit growth in public cloud business, including the increase in adoption of AI-related products. AI-related product revenue has achieved triple-digit year-on-year growth for five consecutive quarters.

Since the end of last year, Alibaba has made efforts in its AI To C business, integrating Alibaba's AI application "Tongyi" into Alibaba's Intelligent Information Business Group, and the department will shoulder the heavy responsibility of Alibaba's AI To C. Just last week, Alibaba founder Jack Ma appeared in Quark's office area to greet employees.

Under the "AI-driven" strategy, Alibaba strives to embrace technology by e-commerce

Recently, Alibaba has also confirmed its cooperation with Apple, which will develop new AI functions for Apple's iPhone users in China. In addition to mobile phones, Alibaba is also promoting the implementation of AI glasses in Tongyi series, including signing a contract with consumer-grade AR brand Thunderbird Innovation RayNeo to provide exclusive customized technical support for its AI glasses. The Tmall Ghost Team is also working in convergence with the Quark product team, exploring new hardware directions such as AI glasses.

In terms of cloud infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud today announced the official launch of the Mexican data center. This is Alibaba Cloud's first data center in Latin America, marking 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 the construction of 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 the 2025 fiscal year. Morgan Stanley issued a report saying that it is expected that future capital expenditure plans and public cloud revenue outlook will be mentioned in the financial report. If Alibaba announces that it will increase investment in AI, it will further increase new order expectations for the entire data center industry.

For Alibaba, it has been an important business breakthrough since its cooperation with Apple proposed the "AI-driven" strategy. Talking about Alibaba andRegarding Apple's cooperation prospects, Countpoint analysts believe that in the future, Apple may tend to adopt a multi-supply model in China and will introduce more large-scale model service providers. However, as a pioneer of this cooperation, Alibaba will enjoy a certain amount of exclusive cooperation. With the continuous development of the market, companies such as Baidu, ByteDance, DeepSeek and other companies may also become potential suppliers. "We predict that Apple Intelligence, which supports Chinese, will also be the first version that supports non-English, will be officially released in 2025." Zhang Yi, CEO of iMedia Consulting, told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that it will cooperate with Apple to cooperate with Apple." Later, Alibaba's AI products will have close, direct contact with C-end users and real application scenarios in the future. These are of great value to Alibaba's future commercial transformation. In addition, Alibaba is not only 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 room for imagination.

It's not just Alibaba, but Ant Group, which has the same roots as Alibaba, has also made frequent moves recently. Recently, information from a recruitment platform shows that Ant Group has opened recruitment of positions such as embodied intelligent humanoid robot systems and applications. A person related to Ant Group said that Ant Group registered and established Ant Lingbo Technology Co., Ltd. last year, focusing on embossed intelligent technologies and product research and development. "Ant Group is continuing to lay out and increase investment in AI."