Fei‑Fei Li Becomes Alibaba Cloud CTO as AI Market Faces Disruption and Growth

The AI Daily for April 10, 2026 highlights a series of significant developments that illustrate both the disruptive and value‑creating forces shaping the global AI landscape.

Chinese AI leadership shift: Alibaba announced that Fei‑Fei Li will serve as CTO of Alibaba Cloud, and the Tongyi Lab has been upgraded to the Tongyi Large Model Business Unit. Li’s startup World Labs secured a $1 billion financing round, pushing its valuation above $10 billion. World Labs focuses on "spatial intelligence"—enabling AI to understand the physical properties of objects and environments, a capability seen as critical for autonomous driving, robotics, and AR/VR.

U.S. SaaS sector under pressure: The SaaS index in the United States has dropped nearly 40% year‑to‑date, with a single‑day decline of 5.5% reported on Thursday. Analysts attribute the decline not to macro‑economic factors but to the emergence of AI agents from companies such as Anthropic, which are perceived as threats to human jobs.

Amazon’s AI chip strategy: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy disclosed in the annual shareholder letter that the company’s self‑developed AI chip business is on track to exceed $20 billion in annual revenue, and Amazon plans to sell its Trainium chips to third‑party customers. The fourth‑generation Trainium3 chip, built on a 3 nm process, delivers 4.4× the performance of its predecessor and more than fourfold efficiency gains, reinforcing AWS’s cost‑advantage moat.

Regulatory scrutiny of OpenAI: Florida’s Attorney General announced an investigation into OpenAI just before the company’s anticipated IPO, citing concerns over data security and the risk of AI technology falling into the hands of U.S. adversaries. The probe adds significant regulatory uncertainty to OpenAI’s valuation, which could reach $1 trillion.

Emergence of the token economy: At the China Development Forum, Liu Liehong, director of the National Data Administration, officially defined the term "token" (词元) as the settlement unit for AI services, signaling a shift from capability‑focused AI deployment to monetized AI usage.

AI‑driven content and adoption: AI‑generated short dramas now account for nearly 30% of the short‑video market, with cumulative views approaching 90 billion during the 2026 Spring Festival period. A survey shows that 39% of university students use AI tools weekly, while 33% of teachers remain reluctant to encourage AI use in education.

WeChat Pay AI integration: WeChat Pay launched an AI payment integration toolbox that includes AI‑friendly documentation, skill packages, and APIs, allowing users to invoke payment functions through a three‑step voice interaction.

Compliance milestone: Glodon’s large‑model service GlodonGPT received national generative‑AI service filing approval, joining the growing list of 223 AI services that have completed regulatory registration in China.

Overall, the report underscores that AI is simultaneously disrupting established sectors—such as SaaS and cloud services—while spawning new opportunities in spatial intelligence, chip manufacturing, token‑based monetization, and AI‑enhanced media.