Alibaba Group
- Chinese name
- 阿里巴巴集团
- Pinyin
- Registered name
- 阿里巴巴（中国）网络技术有限公司
- Unified Social Credit Code
91330100716105852Fregistered in Zhejiang 浙江- Website
- 1897953162
- U.S. restrictions
Hyperscaler platforms · Round-the-clock live commerce
Alibaba Group (阿里巴巴集团), whose main mainland operating company is Alibaba (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd. (阿里巴巴（中国）网络技术有限公司), works on digital humans through separately incorporated group companies. Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) sells digital humans as a cloud service; Alibaba DAMO Academy (阿里达摩院) built Dongdong (冬冬), the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics digital human, and the sign-language digital human Xiaomo (小莫); Taobao and Tmall run virtual livestream hosts and publish the rules for them; Youku carried the drama debut of the hyper-realistic digital actress Leah (厘里); DingTalk adds digital humans to its AI assistants; AutoNavi builds 3D avatars for navigation; and YuanJing (元境) offers cloud rendering and 3D AIGC. Taobao’s Meta technology team, whose patents are filed by Taobao (China) Software Co., Ltd. (淘宝（中国）软件有限公司), developed the open-source MNN engine and the 3D digital human TaoAvatar.
Eddie Wu (吴泳铭) is the current Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group and a long-time core architect of the company’s technology and platform strategy, having previously served as Chairman of Alibaba Cloud and held senior roles across core commerce and infrastructure units. His background is deeply technical, with a focus on large-scale systems, cloud computing, and AI platformization, and under his leadership Alibaba has accelerated an AI-first strategy that treats generative AI, multimodal models, and digital humans as foundational capabilities embedded across e-commerce, international platforms, and enterprise SaaS. Wu’s role is primarily strategic and integrative, aligning DAMO Academy research, Alibaba Cloud tooling, and consumer-facing products such as Taobao livestreaming so that digital humans function not as experiments but as scalable, governed commercial infrastructure.
Wang Jian (王坚) is the founder of Alibaba Cloud and one of the most influential technical figures behind Alibaba’s AI and digital human capabilities, known for establishing the cloud-native, open-source-oriented architecture that supports real-time avatars, 3D digital humans, and multimodal interaction systems. With a background in distributed computing and systems engineering, Wang championed long-term investment in foundational AI infrastructure and research-to-production pipelines, enabling technologies such as MNN and MNN3DAvatar to be deployed at scale. Although no longer managing day-to-day operations, his technical vision continues to shape how Alibaba builds developer platforms and industrial-grade digital humans that can operate reliably across commerce, customer service, and large public events.
Alibaba DAMO Academy (阿里达摩院) is the group’s research company. It developed Dongdong for the Beijing Winter Olympics and the sign-language digital human Xiaomo, and its multimodal and speech work is offered to developers through ModelScope (魔搭) and productized through Alibaba Cloud.
Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) offers a virtual digital human platform integrated with its broader cloud ecosystem, enabling AI-driven avatars for use in livestreaming, customer service, and marketing. Its OpenAPI developer portal provides SDKs and tools to build and deploy interactive digital humans with real-time animation, voice, and lip-sync capabilities. These avatars are positioned as brand ambassadors or virtual assistants across multiple channels. The platform supports independent deployment, allowing businesses to create customizable AI characters based on Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure, leveraging large language models like Tongyi Qianwen for conversational functions.
Zhang Jianfeng (张建锋), also known as Jeff Zhang, is a senior technology executive at Alibaba Group and a former President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, recognized as one of the principal architects of Alibaba Cloud’s technical stack and organizational structure; with deep expertise in large-scale distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and AI platform engineering, he has overseen the development of core cloud and AI capabilities—including computing frameworks, model deployment systems, and enterprise AI services—that underpin Alibaba Cloud’s digital human, virtual agent, and conversational AI solutions, even though specific avatar or digital human products are typically implemented by specialized internal teams or external partners rather than attributed to him individually.
AutoNavi (高德), an Alibaba group company, has developed advanced digital human technologies integrated into its navigation and location-based services. Its core engine, HumanRig, powers 3D virtual avatars used in personalized navigation, IP voice packages, and dynamic in-app visual elements. AutoNavi has also open-sourced components of its digital human framework, focusing on audio-driven realism and interactive experiences. These avatars are designed for applications such as AR navigation and digital storytelling, aligning with Alibaba’s broader smart city and AI strategies.
Hou Jun (侯军) is identified in Chinese corporate records as the Chairman and President of AutoNavi Software Co., Ltd., the Beijing-based digital mapping, navigation, and location services provider that is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group. He oversees the company’s strategic direction, operational management, and integration of advanced technologies such as AI, digital human frameworks, and spatial intelligence into AutoNavi’s core products and services. Under his leadership, the company has expanded beyond traditional map and navigation tools toward AI-native applications and service ecosystems aligned with Alibaba’s broader smart city and intelligent spatial services strategy.
Guo Ning (郭宁) serves as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AutoNavi. In this capacity, he is responsible for executing the company’s product, technology, and market strategies, including the integration of advanced AI capabilities, digital characters, and navigation innovation into AutoNavi’s mobile and enterprise offerings. Guo Ning has publicly articulated AutoNavi’s transition from a navigation tool to a spatial intelligence platform, emphasizing user-centric intelligent agents and proactive services that anticipate user needs. His role is central to driving the company’s evolution within Alibaba’s technology ecosystem and maintaining its competitive position in China’s location-based services market.
DingTalk (钉钉), the group’s workplace and collaboration app, is run by its own company. Its AI assistants can be given 3D or real-person interactive digital humans, DingTalk Docs turns documents into digital-human videos, and it has partnered with Xiaoice (小冰) on digital-human video and reception.
Taobao’s Meta technology team (淘宝 Meta 技术团队), which belongs to Taobao (China) Software (淘宝（中国）软件有限公司), built the MNN inference engine and the 3D real-person digital human TaoAvatar.
Youku (优酷), the group’s long-form video platform, is run by its own Beijing company. The hyper-realistic digital human Leah (厘里), built by the Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment (阿里大文娱) technology team, made her acting debut in the Youku drama Heretic Realm (异人之下) in 2023 and has fronted Youku, Taopiaopiao (淘票票) and Miaoya Camera (妙鸭相机).
Tmall (天猫), the business-to-consumer flagship marketplace of Alibaba Group, has served as one of the most influential commercial platforms in China’s digital human industry by acting simultaneously as a deployment channel, a brand-collaboration venue, and a showcase for parent-company Alibaba’s virtual human technologies. In September 2021, Tmall drew widespread industry attention when it onboarded AYAYI, the hyper-realistic metahuman created by Ranmai Technology, as its “super brand digital manager” and positioned her as Alibaba’s first virtual employee, a move that was widely interpreted as the platform’s entry into metaverse commerce. In February 2022, Alibaba unveiled Dongdong (冬冬), a cloud-technology-driven digital human ambassador launched for the Beijing Winter Olympics who made her debut in Tmall livestreams to interact with Olympics fans and promote merchandise through the Olympic China Flagship Store, demonstrating emotionally expressive speech, gestures, and dance routines. Tmall and sister platform Taobao have since industrialized virtual streamer adoption through the Alibaba Cloud “Brand Smart Livestream Room” (品牌智能直播间) service, which allows merchants to deploy virtual digital human hosts that introduce products, interact with audiences, and conduct page-click operations in the same manner as human streamers, with formal category-entry rules published through Alibaba’s developer documentation and more than one hundred Taobao and Tmall merchants having reached the platform’s “high-quality digital human livestream room” standard by late 2025 according to Taobao University. The platform has also hosted inbound partnerships with external virtual humans, including Baidu’s Du Xiaoxiao (度晓晓), who in November 2023 opened a personally-managed Taobao store called “Xiaoxiao AI Everything Shop” (晓晓AI万事屋) powered by the Ernie Bot large model during the Double 11 shopping festival, and Tmall was further associated with the first platform-wide digital human auction run through Taobao that same month. On the technology-supply side, Alibaba’s DAMO Academy announced in November 2022 a joint research effort with the Tmall Genie (天猫精灵) smart-speaker team to build a large-model-driven digital human that would serve as a terminal interaction engine, with the first “digital human plus terminal” product targeted for release in the first quarter of 2023, positioning Tmall as both a consumer-facing commercial venue for virtual humans and an internal research vehicle for Alibaba’s broader multimodal digital human stack.
Alibaba’s (阿里巴巴) metaverse (元宇宙) footprint has moved through a full arc from strategic embrace to contraction. The company’s most visible metaverse vehicle has been Yuanjing (元境) , a real-time cloud rendering, cloud streaming operating system, and yuan-application computing services brand housed under Yuanjing Shengsheng (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (元境生生（北京）科技有限公司) with operations split between Shanghai and Hangzhou; the unit evolved from the Alibaba Cloud Gaming Business Unit founded in January 2020, was formally launched as the Yuanjing brand in September 2021, released a cloud gaming developer platform in October 2021, and now positions itself as a leading Chinese platform for spatial computing, spatial intelligence, and 3D AIGC. On the research side, DAMO Academy’s XR Lab, led by Tan Ping (谭平), made its public debut at the 2021 Yunqi Conference on October 20 with a thesis framing the metaverse as the full internet experienced through AR and VR glasses, and the Alibaba Cloud Developer Community has hosted technical exposition of this view. Infrastructure and partnership moves have included a dedicated metaverse solutions page on Alibaba Cloud (阿里云) and a joint launch platform called Cloudverse built with Avalanche to let enterprises rapidly deploy bespoke metaverse spaces. Alibaba also led the March 2022 sixty-million-dollar financing round for AR glasses maker Nreal, a bet placed alongside parallel pushes by Tencent (腾讯), ByteDance (字节跳动), Baidu (百度), and NetEase (网易). On the consumer and commerce side, the company rolled out 3D spatial product displays on the Tmall App beginning with 3C categories in 2022 and was ranked among the “Top 2 Most Potential” Chinese metaverse enterprises alongside Huawei (华为) in the 2023 Hurun Metaverse Potential Enterprises List. Momentum reversed sharply in late 2024 as Yuanjing laid off dozens of staff across its Shanghai and Hangzhou teams in a restructuring that reallocated resources toward artificial intelligence, and coverage from Zhihu in January 2025 questioning whether an additional one hundred million yuan injection could sustain the unit framed Alibaba’s metaverse ambitions as a receding chapter within the company’s broader pivot to generative AI and, more recently, the Qianwen (千问) ecosystem-level AI digital human assistant Xiaojiuwo (小酒窝).