AI expert joins Alibaba as VP

Staff reporter

An artificial intelligence expert has joined Alibaba (9988) as group vice president, according to a mainland media report.

Steven Hoi Chu-hong will oversee Alibaba's multimodal AI foundational model focused on individual user applications and agent-related research and solutions, Jiemian reported.

Hoi founded HyperGAI, an applied AI research company, and is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow.

He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Tsinghua University in 2002 and his master's and PhD degrees in computer science and engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2004 and 2006 respectively.

Meanwhile, the Chinese tech giant is building a top-tier AI algorithm research and engineering team for its AI-to-consumer business, according to Jiemian.

In related news, the Qwen2.5-Max model released by Alibaba's subsidiary Tongyi Qianwen surpassed DeepSeek V3 and ranked first among Chinese competitors, according to a list released by third-party testing platform Chatbot Arena.