Alibaba’s chairman Joe Tsai used a 2025 VivaTech appearance to describe innovation and artificial intelligence as central to the company’s direction. But the closest exact wording behind the headline comes from a different leader: in a 2019 investor letter, then-chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang wrote, “Culture is the bedrock of Alibaba, while innovation is in our DNA.” The distinction matters: the sources show how Alibaba describes its culture and strategy, not independent proof of how consistently those ideals are practiced.
Who said innovation was “in our DNA”?
The headline refers to Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s chairman, and his remarks at VivaTech in Paris, reported by Computer Weekly on June 13, 2025. The report’s headline summarizes his message; it should not be read as a verbatim quotation from Tsai.
The clearest exact statement is from Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chairman and CEO at the time. In a company investor letter dated November 15, 2019, Zhang wrote: “Culture is the bedrock of Alibaba, while innovation is in our DNA.” That is Alibaba’s own description of its culture, not an independent assessment.
Computer Weekly’s June 13, 2025 report provides the VivaTech context; Zhang’s 2019 investor letter contains the exact line.
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How Alibaba defines its culture
Alibaba’s September 10, 2019 announcement set out six values and said they guide company behavior and decisions. The company said the values inform people-management practices, including hiring, remuneration and promotion.
- Customers first, employees second, shareholders third
- Trust makes everything simple
- “Change is the only constant.”
- Today’s best performance is tomorrow’s baseline
- “If not now, when? If not me, who?”
- Live seriously, work happily
In Zhang’s 2019 letter, culture also meant encouraging younger employees to create and experiment, developing future leaders, nurturing diversity, and maintaining a partnership-based governance model. These are Alibaba’s stated policies and aspirations; the documents do not establish that every team experiences them uniformly.
Alibaba’s announcement of its six values explains how the company said it expected them to shape behavior.
What Tsai said about AI and Alibaba’s priorities in 2025
At VivaTech, Tsai described Alibaba as facing post-pandemic challenges that included regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical tension and stiff competition. As reported by Computer Weekly, he identified e-commerce and cloud computing as the company’s two areas of focus, with AI playing a substantial role in cloud. He also said Alibaba wanted AI to improve internal efficiency and productivity and to be integrated into its apps.
“We want to have AI everywhere,” Tsai said, according to the report. He also said: “AI both within the company to help out efficiency, productivity wise, but also have AI infused into every app that we make.” These are interview remarks reported in June 2025, not a measurement of how extensively AI had been deployed.
The report connected Alibaba’s accelerated model development to competitive pressure after DeepSeek’s January 2025 release. Tsai said Alibaba’s engineers moved faster and released the Qwen series within weeks; the story also discussed Qwen 2.5-Max and his explanation for open-sourcing the model. Those model details describe the 2025 context and should not be taken as a current product comparison.
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What Alibaba reported about AI and cloud in 2026
In a May 20, 2026 chairman and CEO letter, Alibaba described AI and cloud as a major strategic investment area. The company reported the following for Cloud Intelligence Group in fiscal 2026’s final quarter:
| Company-reported measure | Period and scope |
|---|---|
| 40% external revenue growth | Cloud Intelligence Group, fiscal 2026 final quarter |
| 30% of external revenue came from AI-related products | Cloud Intelligence Group, fiscal 2026 final quarter |
These are figures Alibaba reported for that business segment and quarter; they are not figures for Alibaba’s total revenue and are not independently verified here. The letter also described Qwen models, AI chips, and consumer and enterprise applications, and said the company was scaling full-stack AI investment with the aim of making AI plus cloud another growth engine. Those investment plans are forward-looking company statements.
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Alibaba’s May 20, 2026 chairman and CEO letter gives the reporting period and company’s stated strategy.
What the phrase does—and does not—establish
“Innovation is in our DNA” is best understood as a statement of corporate identity. Alibaba has linked that identity to declared values, experimentation, talent development and governance; Tsai’s 2025 comments connected it to a focus on e-commerce, cloud and AI; and the company’s 2026 letter described continuing investment in AI and cloud.
Those sources document what Alibaba and its leaders said, including company-reported performance figures. They do not independently demonstrate how consistently the stated values are applied or establish that the company’s strategy will achieve its intended results.
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