Mr. Zhang is the managing partner of Firstlight Capital. He is also a member of Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s Mainland China Advisory Group and the board of directors of the Saudi Tourism Authority.
Mr. Zhang was appointed as the chief executive officer of Alibaba Group in May 2015 and its chairman in September 2019 until September 2023. Mr. Zhang was a founding member of the Alibaba Partnership.
Mr. Zhang joined Alibaba Group in 2007 where he held numerous key positions, including chief financial officer of Taobao Marketplace; general manager and president of Tmall.com; chief operating officer of Alibaba Group; chairman of Cainiao Network; and chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, in addition to his other key positions until 2023. During his 16-year journey with Alibaba Group, Mr. Zhang was the driving force behind numerous groundbreaking initiatives and his innovations have redefined the global industry for brands, retailers and beyond. He created Tmall, Alibaba’s B2C ecommerce platform which today has grown to become the world’s largest third-party e-commerce marketplace for brands and retailers. He launched Singles Day, which transformed November 11th into the biggest shopping festival worldwide. He reinvented brand ecommerce from a sales channel to a D2C platform where brands can directly reach, engage and sell to 1 billion Chinese consumers with access to immense consumer insights, creating a robust business model which turned the consumer ecommerce business into Alibaba’s profit engine. Mr. Zhang was also a pioneer in new retail, setting new industry benchmarks such as with Alibaba’s grocery retailer experiment Freshippo, inspiring global peers in the retail industry. He also oversaw the creation of a unified data infrastructure across Alibaba’s various businesses, which unlocked the immense value of cross-business data intelligence for the company and became an industry benchmark for enterprise digitalization in China.
Before joining Alibaba Group, Mr. Zhang was chief financial officer of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited between 2005 and 2007. Mr. Zhang started his career at Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1995 to 2005.
Mr. Zhang previously served as a member of the World Economic Forum International Business Council and as co-chair of the Consumer Goods Forum in both its global and China boards. He was recognized as 100 Most Influential People by TIME magazine in 2020, Best CEO by Forbes China in 2020, and Businessperson of the Year by Fortune magazine in 2019 and 2020.
Mr. Zhang graduated from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics with a bachelor’s degree in finance. He was appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director of the Company in December 2024 and is aged 53.