Alibaba's Joe Tsai: AI Agents Won't Replace CEOs; Group to Promote Global Open Source of AI Models

At the Siemens RXD Conference, Joe Tsai, Chairman of Alibaba Group, dialogued with Roland Busch, Global CEO of Siemens. Tsai stated Alibaba's core strategy is to drive everything with AI in the future, positioning the group to support all AI-using enterprises via cloud infrastructure.

Tsai believes AI agents won't replace CEOs. CEOs' most scarce resources are time and energy; previously, they controlled direct reports to avoid burnout. With AI agents, CEOs can manage more tasks and free up time for strategy, so the CEO position remains safe.

On model strategy, Tsai said the group chooses open-source to promote global model adoption. Customers can use closed-source models via API or open-source ones, but both need computing power— the group hopes this comes from its cloud services.