Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Jack Ma, will retire on Monday and resume his philanthropic interests, The New York Times reported. Ma is known as one among the best Chinese corporate leaders.
He will continue mentoring the management of the company and will remain as a board director, The New York Times said on Friday. However, it is not yet clear if the company will appoint a new chairman.
Ma is the third richest person in China with Forbes magazine estimating his net worth to be $36.6 billion. He told NYT that his retirement was rather than being the end, ‘a beginning of a new era’.
He is currently heading a variety of educational and environmental charitable projects. He is seen as a cult figure his native internet industry and has a large following by entrepreneurs. In lieu with keeping an international face, he often invites global leaders to the company’s headquarters.
His company boasts of 66,000 full-time employees and is currently the biggest ecommerce firm in China. During Friday’s closing, the company had a $420 billion market value.
Earlier in January, Alibaba developed an artificial intelligence model that scored better than humans in a Stanford University reading and comprehension test.
The Chinese e-commerce titan has joined the likes of Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. in a race to develop AI that can enrich social media feeds, target ads and services or even aid in autonomous driving. Beijing has endorsed the technology in a national-level plan that calls for the country to become the industry leader 2030.
