Alibaba replaces DingTalk CEO Chen Hang with 1992-born successor

Alibaba's Partnership Committee publicly rebuked DingTalk's management culture one day before removing its CEO.

Alibaba Group replaced DingTalk Chief Executive Officer Chen Hang with Chen Yusen, a 1992-born executive, after the company's Partnership Committee publicly criticized the enterprise software unit's management culture in an internal memo that went viral across Chinese social media.

"Mutual respect, treating people as people, loyalty and righteousness form the foundation of Alibaba's corporate culture," the Partnership Committee said in a June 10 memo titled "Loyalty and Growth: That's Alibaba Culture." The committee stated that the practices described in a former employee's resignation essay "have never been the direction Alibaba's culture advocates" and declared that innovation in the AI era depends on "employee passion and creativity," not on "pressure and mechanical execution."

The intervention followed a viral resignation essay by a former DingTalk product manager who joined in June 2025 and worked on the flagship AI product "ONE" (Project O), an AI-powered work information stream launched as part of DingTalk 8.0. The essay, titled "Inside DingTalk," described shifting internal priorities, mounting leadership pressure, and toxic workplace practices. Chen Hang, known by his alias Wuzhao, had only returned as DingTalk CEO in April 2025, replacing Ye Jun after less than two years in the role.

The leadership shakeup threatens to disrupt DingTalk's high-stakes pivot toward AI-powered enterprise services at a time when the platform competes against ByteDance's Feishu and Tencent's WeCom for China's enterprise collaboration market. DingTalk's former Vice President Ma Ruila also published a reflective essay titled "Outside DingTalk" following his departure, signaling broader internal discontent beyond the single resignation.

A Rare Public Rebuke

The Partnership Committee's direct criticism of DingTalk's management carries weight beyond the unit itself. Alibaba has spent years rebuilding its corporate culture after the 2021 antitrust crackdown and subsequent restructuring into six business groups. The memo's language — emphasizing "mutual respect" and "loyalty and righteousness" — echoes founder Jack Ma's long-standing emphasis on Alibaba's "six core values" as the company's cultural backbone.

For DingTalk, which serves more than 6 million enterprise customers and processes billions of daily messages, the leadership change introduces execution risk. The platform's AI pivot under Project O was positioned as a growth driver for Alibaba's cloud and enterprise software ecosystem. Any disruption to product roadmaps or talent retention could slow adoption at a critical juncture when competitors are investing heavily in AI-powered workplace tools.

Chen Yusen, the incoming CEO, takes over a unit navigating both cultural reform and product transformation. His appointment at age 34 marks a generational shift in Alibaba's leadership ranks, as the company pushes younger executives into top roles. DingTalk 8.0, launched with the AI-powered "ONE" stream as its centerpiece, represents Alibaba's bet that AI agents can reshape workplace collaboration — a thesis shared by Feishu, which has aggressively courted enterprise customers with its own AI features.

Investment Angle

Alibaba's stock, trading at roughly 10x forward earnings, has shown limited reaction to the DingTalk news. The unit's revenue contribution to Alibaba's overall cloud and enterprise segment remains modest relative to the group's core commerce and cloud computing businesses. However, the rare governance intervention signals that Alibaba's leadership views cultural cohesion as a prerequisite for its AI strategy to succeed — a factor investors may weigh against the near-term distraction of a CEO transition. The broader question for shareholders is whether the cultural reset can restore employee morale without slowing DingTalk's product momentum against well-funded rivals.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.