Alibaba launches agent AI tool for enterprises with Slack and Teams integration plans

Chinese technology giant Alibaba on Tuesday released Wukong, a new agent-based artificial intelligence tool, for enterprise customers as the company faces reorganization and increased competition.

The company told CNBC in a statement that Wukong provides “enterprise-grade security infrastructure” while allowing businesses to manage multiple agents through a single interface.

The platform, which is still in invite-only testing, will allow users to manage agents who handle tasks such as document editing, approvals, meeting transcription, and research. Unlike chatbots, which respond to prompts, AI agents can take proactive actions, which often requires extensive access to a company’s data and systems, raising privacy and security concerns.

Wukong, named after Sun Wukong from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, is available as a standalone desktop application or through DingTalk, a cloud-based communications platform. sales forceslack.

Besides DingTalk, which has more than 20 million enterprise users, Alibaba has outlined plans to connect Wukong with other messaging platforms such as Slack. microsoft with the team tencentWeChat expands access to mobile devices.

Wukong will also be gradually integrated into Alibaba’s broader suite of e-commerce platforms, including Taobao and Alipay.

Alibaba is the latest company to deploy AI agents. rival tencent Startups such as Shiura AI The company has been racing to launch a similar product built on OpenClaw, an open source agent platform developed by Peter Steinberger, who has since joined Sam Altman’s OpenAI.

Alibaba’s announcement of new enterprise tools comes at a pivotal moment for the Hangzhou-based company founded by billionaire Jack Ma.

Wukong’s announcement comes a day after the company announced a reorganization, with its AI agent platform now part of the new Alibaba Token Hub business group.

In addition to Wukong, the new business group will focus on the development and application of AI tokens, oversee existing Alibaba divisions Tongyi Laboratory, MaaS Business Line, Qwen, and AI Innovation, and will be led by Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu.

An AI token refers to a unit of data or value used within an AI system, such as input, output, or usage related to computing.

In an internal memo posted Monday on the company’s news portal Alijila, Wu said the company is on the “threshold of an inflection point[in artificial general intelligence]” and the change is a “historic opportunity.”

The reorganization also follows the departure of key people involved in the development of Alibaba’s popular agent chatbot Qwen.

On March 4, Lin Junyang, Qwen’s principal technology officer, hinted at his departure from the company in a cryptic post on X, writing, “Goodbye, my beloved Qwen.”

The next day, Alibaba CEO Wu confirmed Lin’s resignation in an internal staff memo seen by CNBC, saying the company “accepts Lin Junyang’s resignation and sincerely appreciates his contributions during his time with our company.”

According to Reuters, Lin’s departure is the third executive departure from the Qwen team this year, following Yu Bowen and Hui Bingyuan, who served as heads of post-training and coding, respectively.

alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares closed 0.45% higher at HK$134.6 ($17.17) on Tuesday following Wukong’s announcement. The company is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter 2025 financial results on Thursday.

—CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.