(Yicai) June 11 -- Alibaba Group Holding said Chen Yusen, a tech whizz born in 1992, has been made chief executive officer of its enterprise collaboration and workplace messaging super-app DingTalk, making him the youngest person to lead a unit of the Chinese e-commerce and artificial intelligence powerhouse.

Chen Yusen takes over from Chen Hang as CEO of DingTalk, Hangzhou-based Alibaba announced today. At the age of 22, Chen Yusen founded Chaitin Tech, a cybersecurity firm that was acquired by Alibaba Cloud in 2019. Once named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list, he led the development of Alibaba Cloud's AI Agent MuleRun last year.

The leadership change comes a day after Alibaba’s Partnership Committee, its top decision-making body, criticized the management style at DingTalk as "not in line with Alibaba's culture" in an strongly worded article titled "Only With Love, Loyalty, and Growth Can We Embody Alibaba's Culture" that was posted on the firm's intranet. 

The post was Alibaba’s formal response to a departure essay penned by a former employee last month titled “Inside DingTalk.” The long piece detailed various issues with management, including high-pressure overtime culture, top-down command, disregard for individual creativity, and relentless pressure from middle managers. 

"In DingTalk, it's hard to feel like you are respected," the person wrote. The company claims to help other firms achieve digital transformation and stimulate organizational vitality, but it follows the most traditional industrial-era control model in its internal management, the person pointed out.

Alibaba’s shares [HKG: 9988] fell 5.4 percent to HKD107.40 (USD13.71) apiece in Hong Kong today amid an ongoing global tech selloff driven mainly by a re-evaluation of AI and semiconductor stocks.

In a separate development today, Beijing’s market regulator summoned e-commerce giants, including Alibaba's unit Taobao and Tmall Group, over false promotions and opaque seller information, ordering corrections to curb excessive competition ahead of the so-called “618” mid-year shopping festival.

Editor: Martin Kadiev