en.Wedoany.com Reported - Alibaba announced a management reshuffle at DingTalk, with Wuzhao stepping down as CEO and being succeeded by tech geek Chen Yusen. Alibaba's Partnership Committee previously criticized DingTalk's management style in an internal post, stating it was "not what Alibaba culture should look like." This change marks the end of recent controversies surrounding DingTalk's high-pressure management approach.
After returning in 2025, DingTalk founder Wuzhao led the team to analyze 1,850 user requirements, fix 574 user-reported issues, and revamp over 20 product lines in just four months. Within eight months, he successively launched AI DingTalk 1.0, AI DingTalk 1.1, and AI DingTalk 2.0. However, his intense management style sparked internal backlash. Former employees Yousu and Marila published articles exposing the high-pressure atmosphere at DingTalk. In "Inside Ding," Yousu mentioned that during the ONE closed development period, workdays ran from 9 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., with Sundays often requiring work, and taking leave could affect performance reviews. In "Outside Ding," Marila stated that he worked seven days a week, sleeping only five hours a day. The Alibaba Partnership Committee subsequently issued a statement emphasizing that "mutual respect, treating people as humans, and having compassion and loyalty" are the foundation of Alibaba culture, arguing that DingTalk's high-pressure management had crossed a cultural bottom line.
The ONE project, led by Wuzhao after his return, aimed to create an AI-driven work information feed product that "finds people." At its peak, it had about 3 million daily active users, but it was burdened with multiple goals such as reducing employee workload, serving as a flagship for AI upgrades, boosting morale, and achieving commercialization, leading to core positioning conflicts. The project adopted a feed-style card design similar to short-video platforms. Once users browsed message summaries on the homepage, the system automatically marked them as "read," putting pressure on ordinary users. In March 2026, DingTalk launched "Wukong," a new AI-native work platform. This standalone application focuses on multi-agent collaboration and cross-platform integration, with plans to connect external tools like WeChat, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. Wukong also released "one-person team" solutions covering ten major industries, including e-commerce, design, and manufacturing, and has signed a cooperation agreement with Shagang Group.
The incoming CEO, Chen Yusen, is a post-90s tech entrepreneur who won multiple championships in top domestic and international computer competitions. At age 22, he founded cybersecurity company Chaitin Tech, which was acquired by Alibaba Cloud in 2019. After joining Alibaba in 2023, he led the establishment of Alibaba Cloud's Southern and Western China region from scratch and guided the team in developing the AI Agent product MuleRun. As Alibaba increases its investment in AI strategy, with capital expenditures reaching 86 billion yuan in fiscal year 2025 and an announced additional 380 billion yuan over the next three years, DingTalk has been repositioned as a "natural language interaction enterprise intelligence hub." Whether Chen Yusen can lead DingTalk to effectively collaborate with other Alibaba business groups and develop AI office products that create value will be a key focus of external attention.
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