Alibaba announced a major restructuring of its large-model organization: the Tongyi large model business division and the Future Life Lab merge to form the Token Foundry Business Division, personally led by group CEO Wu Yongming. Zhou Jingren is appointed group chief scientist, leading the establishment of the AI Future Research Institute; Zheng Bo brings new businesses such as Happy Horse and Happy Oyster into the Token Foundry Business Division.
The name "Token Foundry" itself is a signal: in the second half of the large-model competition, tokens are the real battlefield, and whoever can generate, compress, and schedule tokens more efficiently holds the initiative in efficiency and experience. In March, when Alibaba established the Alibaba Token Hub (ATH) business group, it had already put Tongyi Lab, MaaS, Qwen, AI Innovation Business, and Wukong Business Department into the same container; this time the Token Foundry Business Division is making the "core engine" of model development an independent army, shortening the loop between basic research, training, and landing.
The two names Happy Horse and Happy Oyster surface for the first time, and whether they can become the next generation of model series after Qwen is worth watching. Alibaba's "Token Foundry" aims to connect the entire chain from token design, production, to distribution, folding basic research and landing applications under the same baton. Whether this path works will directly determine the distribution of voice in the second half of China's large-model race.