Business

Alibaba has transferred its autonomous driving team from DAMO Academy to its logistics arm in a recent restructuring move.

  • DAMO Academy, Alibaba’s in-house research initiative, will no longer retain its autonomous driving business unit, a spokeswoman confirmed
  • The technology has been deployed at universities, residential communities and parks across Chinese cities to solve the ‘last mile’ logistics problem

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding has transferred its autonomous driving research and development (R&D) team under DAMO Academy to the firm’s Cainiao logistics arm, the latest move in a corporate restructuring announced earlier this year.

However, the transfer will only involve some of the employees at the self-driving lab, with the rest being laid off or internally transferred, according to a report by Chinese media Jiemian, citing anonymous sources.

DAMO Academy, Alibaba’s in-house research initiative, will no longer retain its autonomous driving business unit, according to a report by Shanghai Securities News, citing sources close to DAMO and Cainiao. A spokeswoman at Alibaba Cloud confirmed the transfer but did not respond to a request for information about the lay-offs. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The change reflects the company’s new focus on applications and profitability, with individual operations expected to make it on their own. In March, Alibaba unveiled its biggest-ever corporate restructuring, which reorganised the company into six independently-run entities with separate CEOs and boards of directors, and each unit having profit and loss responsibilities.

Alibaba will also set up corporate entities for other operations using a “1+6+N” structure, with 1 referring to the group, 6 referring to the number of business units, and N referring to future business units, according to a letter to employees. The fate of DAMO remains uncertain.

The purpose of the overhaul is to rekindle entrepreneurial spirit within the firm,according to Alibaba. Group CEO Daniel Zhang Yong said the spun off businesses will be encouraged to apply for their own initial public offerings (IPOs).

Meanwhile, Cainiao, which is widely seen as a likely candidate for public listing, is trying to raise up to US$2 billion in an IPO in Hong Kong next year, according to a Reuters report earlier this month. Freshippo, Alibaba’s supermarket chain, is also preparing to file an IPO in the city, according to a Bloomberg report last month.

Autonomous driving is widely seen as a promising future technology, but requires heavy investment.

According to information on the DAMO Academy website, the lab conducts research and development on intelligent logistics robots, combining autonomous driving technology with logistics collection applications. The technology has been deployed at university campuses, residential communities and in parks across many Chinese cities to solve the “last mile” logistics problem, considered the costliest part of the supply chain.

DAMO Academy and Cainiao have already been cooperating on the development of self-driving vehicles for logistics applications. Cainiao has deployed robotic cars, called “Xiaomanlu”, at hundreds of universities in China, including Zhejiang, Fudan and Shanghai Jiaotong, according to Chinese media reports.

The self-driving cars, operating inside the campuses, deliver packages to dormitories after they have been dropped off at pickup stations by couriers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Xiaomanlu was also deployed for community delivery services in cities like Shanghai, Hangzhou and Xian.

Source
scmp

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