Overview
- Alibaba announced the merger of its Tongyi large-model unit and Future Life Lab into a new Token Foundry division Monday, which will report directly to CEO Wu Yongming.
- The company named Zhou Jingren as chief scientist and said he will lead the creation of an AI Future Research Institute to focus on long-term frontier research.
- Zheng Bo’s teams, including Happy Horse and Happy Oyster, have been folded into Token Foundry to concentrate model development, engineering and deployment under one chain of command.
- The change follows recent technical and commercial signals—Qwen 3.7 series rankings in third-party tests and rising API demand—and aims to shorten the path from model R&D to paid products and ARR growth.
- Analysts say the move mirrors global tech trends to unite labs and product teams and could speed productization for developers and customers while concentrating compute and engineering resources.