Daniel Zhang, the former CEO of Alibaba, has stepped down from his position in the tech giant’s cloud division, in a move that has shocked industry leaders. The 51-one-year-old had taken charge of the cloud division just months ago. Since the announcement by Alibaba, the component stock dropped 3 per cent on Monday in Hong Kong. “The board of our company expresses its deepest appreciation to Mr Zhang for his contributions to Alibaba Group over the past 16 years,” Alibaba said in a statement. Eddie Yongming Wu will succeed Mr Zhang as the acting chairman and CEO of its cloud unit, according to the statement. Nearly three months ago, Mr Zhang quit as company chief and said that he wanted to take care of the spin-off of its cloud business. Now, as Alibaba announced his exit from the cloud division amid the biggest-ever restructuring of the company, Mr Zhang’s exit has come as a surprise to analysts. “We were surprised by the announcement,” Citi analysts wrote on Monday. “Mr Zhang may have wanted to step back from the public spotlight, in our view,” they added, according to CNN. The cloud division is currently estimated to be worth $41bn - $60bn. However, analysts said the reams of data it oversees puts it at risk of facing regulatory scrutiny from both domestic and international regulators. Alibaba split into six business groups – including cloud, e-commerce, logistics, media and entertainment – in March in a major restructuring. “Daniel has expressed his wish to transition away from his role as chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group,” Alibaba said in the letter. “Following careful consideration, the Alibaba board respected and accepted Daniel’s decision and appointed Eddie as acting chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group, effectively immediately.” Citi analyst Alicia Yap was quoted as saying by CNBC on Monday that “investors may be concerned that the timing and process of AliCloud’s spin-off may be affected”. She added that Citi will continue to monitor developments and that they are awaiting any new announcements. CNN reported that in an internal letter to employees, Joseph C Tsai, chairman of Alibaba Group, said that he and Mr Wu are looking forward to embracing “the next phase” of Alibaba’s development. “This past March, we embarked on our most ambitious reorganisation in Alibaba’s 24-year history – “1+6+N” – in order to position the company for the future,” he wrote on Sunday, referring to the company’s organisational structure after the restructuring – 1 holding company, six business groups and various businesses. “Under Daniel’s and our team’s dedicated efforts, the reorganisation is making steady progress while our business continues to grow.” Read More Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announces new CEO and chairman in major management reshuffle Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba says it will not sell shares in Ant's buyback program Chinese livestreamers set their sights on TikTok sales to shoppers in the US and Europe How Google reshaped the world – and is about to do it all over again Update your iPhone immediately The new iPhone could be the most expensive ever by far

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Elon Musk’s X has been ordered by a judge to pay $1.1m in legal fees to its laid off former executives. Since Mr Musk’s takeover of X, the company formerly known as Twitter, the multibillionaire and X have faced a number of lawsuits. These include suits over the firm’s failure to pay its vendors and delays in paying rent for its office premises, as well as former employees suing Twitter alleging they were laid off without adequate notice. On Tuesday, Delaware Chancery Court judge Kathaleen St J McCormick ruled in favour of the company’s ex-chief Parag Agrawal and said X must pay $1.1m in legal fees linked with probes of the platform during Mr Musk’s 2022 takeover, Bloomberg first reported. After buying out the microblogging platform in November last year, the Tesla titan fired Mr Agrawal and Twitter’s then-lead policy officer Vijaya Gadde as well as a number of other executives. Mr Agrawal and Ms Gadde then sued Twitter/X for failing to pay for their legal bills, including for the latter’s appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The lawsuit filing alleged the company paid only about $600,000 of what it owes, withholding $1.1m in fees for its lawyers’ work representing the former executives in an inquiry on the role played by social media on US elections. The filing alleged Twitter/X “breached the agreements and contravened the bylaws” by not paying the former staff. The latest ruling by the Delaware court judge observed that X “violated its duties to cover legal expenses generated by their work for the company”. While acknowledging that $1.1m is a lot of money, the judge still ruled in favour of the former Twitter executives. “I have reviewed the amount in question, and although it is high and probably higher than most humans would like to pay, it’s not unreasonable,” judge McCormick was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. X did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment. The company is also being sued over its rebrand to X by an ad agency also named X, alleging the social media platform’s new name violates Florida common law because of “unfair competition and trademark and service mark infringement”. Read More Elon Musk’s mockery of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky ‘unhelpful’ Elon Musk’s X Corp sued by another social network company named X ‘Reckless’ Elon Musk hit with $1m lawsuit for accusing student of being in Proud Boys ‘false flag’ attack Elon Musk’s X Corp sued by another social network company named X Elon Musk to live stream himself gaming on X in ‘everything app’ bid Musk confirms he is cutting election integrity staff from X/Twitter ahead of 2024

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