2023 was a tumultuous year for Alibaba Group, which called off plans to spin off its cloud business and shuffled its management. In June, Alibaba said Eddie Wu would succeed Daniel Zhang as its chief executive, so Zhang could focus on the cloud intelligence business. Wu is the firm's fourth CEO since its inception in 1999. Zhang abruptly departed the cloud business unit in September and Wu became acting chairman and CEO of Alibaba's Cloud Intelligence Group.