(Yicai) March 17 -- Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding has restructured its artificial intelligence businesses by establishing Alibaba Token Hub, with the new unit focusing on creating, distributing, and applying tokens.

Alibaba Token Hub will be overseen directly by Alibaba's Chief Executive Eddie Wu, the Hangzhou-based parent firm announced yesterday.

Alibaba's subsidiaries Tongyi Lab, Qwen, Wukong, the Model as a Service business line, and AI Innovation will be integrated into Alibaba Token Hub, according to a letter sent to staff by Wu and seen by Yicai on the same day.

The world is on the eve of an artificial general intelligence explosion, where tens of billions of AI agents will power many digital tasks, Wu noted. These agents, driven by tokens generated by models, will become the main medium of interaction between humans and the digital world, so Alibaba Token Hub was set up to seize this historic opportunity, he added.

Centered on the new subsidiary, Alibaba will strengthen strategic coordination among its AI businesses and fully implement its AI strategy, with Alibaba Token Hub becoming a core business group, standing alongside e-commerce and cloud services.

Alibaba Token Hub will cover a complete AI layout, from basic model research and development and model service platforms to AI applications for individual and enterprise users.

Tongyi Lab will be responsible for "creating tokens" by developing cutting-edge multimodal models, while the MaaS business line will "distribute tokens" as a large model service platform serving enterprise customers. The Qwen, Wukong, and AI Innovation teams will focus on "applying tokens" and competing for AI entry points for consumer and enterprise users.

The move was also the official unveiling of the Wukong unit, positioning it as a B-side AI-native work platform that deeply integrates model capabilities into enterprise workflows, meaning that Alibaba is ramping up efforts to compete in the B-side AI application market. The new AI Innovation team will focus on applying AI in segmented scenarios and innovating product forms to accelerate the validation and market launch of related applications.

By integrating its AI business around the "token" concept rather than models or computing power, Alibaba may be shifting its focus from pursuing tech leadership to prioritizing explosive commercial use. The "model-as-a-product" approach is becoming outdated, with Alibaba seeing the "model plus agent" as the better path toward AGI.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev