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A general view of the Alibaba headquarters at West Bund in Shanghai, China, on February 28, 2026. (Photo by Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Chinese technology giant Alibaba on Tuesday launched a new agentic artificial intelligence tool called Wukong for enterprise customers, amid company restructuring and increasing competition.
Alibaba told CNBC in a statement that Wukong enables businesses to manage multiple AI agents through a single interface while providing "enterprise-grade security infrastructure."
Currently in an invitation-only testing phase, the platform can manage agents performing tasks such as document editing, approvals, meeting transcription, and research. Unlike chatbots that respond to prompts, AI agents can take proactive actions, often requiring broader access to company data and systems, which raises privacy and security concerns.
Named after the Monkey King character from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, Wukong is available as a standalone desktop application or via DingTalk, Alibaba’s cloud-based communications platform similar to Salesforce’s Slack.
In addition to DingTalk, which has over 20 million corporate users, Alibaba plans to integrate Wukong with other messaging platforms, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Tencent's WeChat, expanding access to mobile devices.
Wukong will also be gradually integrated into Alibaba's broader e-commerce ecosystem, including platforms such as Taobao and Alipay.
Alibaba is the latest company to introduce AI agents. Competitors like Tencent and startups such as Zhipu AI have raced to launch similar products built on OpenClaw, an open-source agentic platform developed by Peter Steinberger, who has since joined Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
The announcement of Alibaba’s new enterprise tool comes at a pivotal moment for the Hangzhou-based company founded by billionaire Jack Ma.
Wukong was unveiled a day after Alibaba announced a reorganization, placing the AI agent platform under its new Alibaba Token Hub business group.
Besides Wukong, the new business group — which will focus on developing and applying AI tokens — will oversee existing Alibaba units including Tongyi Laboratory, MaaS Business Line, Qwen, and AI Innovation. The group will be led by Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu.
AI tokens refer to units of data or value used within AI systems, including inputs, outputs, or usage tied to computing.
In an internal memo published Monday on Alizila, Alibaba’s news portal, Wu described the changes as a "historic opportunity" as the company stands at the "threshold of an [artificial general intelligence] inflection point."
Leadership Exits
The restructuring follows the departure of key personnel involved in developing Alibaba’s popular agentic chatbot Qwen.
On March 4, Lin Junyang, the key technical lead behind Qwen, hinted at his departure from the company in a cryptic post on X, writing "bye my beloved qwen."
A day later, Alibaba CEO Wu confirmed Lin’s resignation in an internal staff memo reviewed by CNBC, stating the company had accepted "Lin Junyang’s resignation and we sincerely thank him for his contributions during his time with us."
Lin’s resignation marks the third senior departure this year from the Qwen team, following Yu Bowen and Hui Binyuan, who led post-training and coding respectively, according to Reuters.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares closed 0.45% higher Tuesday at 134.6 Hong Kong dollars ($17.17) following the Wukong announcement. The company is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings on Thursday.
— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
