Alibaba veteran programmer with assets starting from 1 billion yuan has switched to a rising Hangzhou tech company.

On August 18, Hangzhou Beilian Zhuguan announced that Cai Jingxian (alias Duolong) has officially joined this startup company.

"It's amazing that Duolong and I never thought we would have the opportunity and fate to work together again in the AI era," said Lin Hao (alias Bixuan), founder of Beilian Zhuguan.

Screenshots from Lin Hao's group chat showed that Cai joined the company on August 6.

Cai Jingxian was Taobao's first programmer, joining Alibaba in 2000, only one year later than group CEO Wu Yongming. He is highly experienced, and there's a saying within Alibaba's tech team: "When in trouble, find Duolong."

This programmer started from a house in Lakeside Gardens and has worked at Alibaba for 25 years, accumulating assets worth billions. After achieving success and fame, he's embarking on a new journey, joining several former colleagues to focus intensively on AI.

**Starting Anew**

Cai Jingxian is two years younger than Wu Yongming, only 48 years old. He holds massive Alibaba stocks and once appeared on the Hurun Rich List in 2017 with a net worth of 2.6 billion yuan. Since then, despite Alibaba's stock price fluctuations, there has been about a 40% increase. Even if he didn't sell at the peak, his shareholding value should only have increased.

Cai also holds considerable equity in Ant Group. He is one of the limited partners of controlling shareholders Hangzhou Junhan and Hangzhou Junao, with committed capital of 352 million yuan, obtaining 28 million shares. Based on this calculation, Cai Jingxian's net worth should be over 3 billion yuan, having achieved financial freedom long ago.

The company he joined is an AI enterprise co-founded in 2021 by six Alibaba tech experts. In other words, he's still working with his former colleagues.

Beilian Zhuguan's actual controller and CEO Lin Hao is a former Alibaba P10 technical expert who worked there for 14 years, leading the design of Alibaba's e-commerce multi-site active architecture. Co-founder Lin Xuan also worked at Alibaba for 11 years, serving in various departments including business middle platform and Alibaba Cloud.

Lin Hao's team aims to build a company that reduces server and cloud resource costs for clients. With the founding team's rich experience, Beilian Zhuguan has secured orders from multiple listed companies.

For example, their Beilian Cloud Jiuxiang product is applied to Li Auto's big data platform, improving task operation stability and reducing the on-call rate for operations personnel and per-vehicle data costs.

Cai Jingxian's position has not yet been announced. After this tech expert joins, Lin Hao hopes to change operations services based on AI Agent, allowing every company to have multiple "Duolongs" in different fields.

The biggest challenge in operations services is the need for professional teams to ensure service quality. "It's difficult for a company to have so many professional talents. Even at Alibaba, we had headaches cultivating such talents."

According to Beilian Zhuguan's announcement, this business is difficult to scale and standardize, which is one of the reasons why the operations service market is large but lacks leading companies.

After Cai Jingxian joins, Beilian Zhuguan can consolidate his 25 years of work experience into AI tools, "also allowing clients to confidently entrust operations services to the company."

**Signs Were There**

Cai Jingxian is low-key and loves coding. When serving as a partner, his position was merely "Senior Researcher of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Business Group." Other partners mostly had titles like "President" or "Senior Director."

The book "Taobao Technology: These Ten Years" wrote that most of the time, Cai would be at his desk coding. If he wasn't at his desk, he should be in the restroom. When immersed in the programming world, external people and things could hardly disturb him.

"During the company's ping-pong tournament finals, only 20 meters away from Duolong, with gongs and drums thundering and voices bustling, many people were attracted there, but Duolong was the only one in the entire office area still 'stuck' to his chair," a colleague commented.

Cai Jingxian's departure showed early signs. Thanks to his technical contributions, Cai Jingxian became a partner in 2014, just before Alibaba's IPO. In 2023, Alibaba implemented the "1+6+N" architectural reform, establishing six major business groups including Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and multiple business companies. The partner list was adjusted accordingly, and Cai Jingxian's name no longer appeared.

In June 2025, Alibaba's financial report showed that another 9 partners had left, including two Alibaba founding members Peng Lei and Dai Shan. The partners remaining on the list are mostly frontline leaders in e-commerce, cloud, and AI businesses who are closer to the market and lead teams to drive business development, such as e-commerce business group CEO Jiang Fan.

As new waves rise and veterans step down, Cai Jingxian's departure is a vivid footnote in Alibaba's transformation wave.

"Alibaba's development has many inevitable paths and processes to take. Alibaba is changing," founder Jack Ma once said.

**Forged Through Trials**

In 2000, Cai Jingxian, who graduated with a master's degree in biology from Zhejiang University, chose to follow Jack Ma and become a programmer among many job offers.

"When I first joined Alibaba, I didn't even understand JAVA," Cai Jingxian said. The various problems encountered during the company's development allowed him to continuously master new technologies. Coming from a non-computer science background, he gradually became a computer expert.

On Alibaba's internal network, the tags on Cai Jingxian's personal page are "God" and "Expert among experts."

In 2003, Jack Ma secretly developed Taobao and selected three leaders: "Duolong" Cai Jingxian, "Xuzhu" Shi Yufeng, and "Sanfeng" Jiang Peng. In one month, they built Taobao from scratch. Cai Jingxian led the development of the transaction system and forum system. "From 2003 to 2007, the Taobao search engine was written and maintained by him alone," said former Alibaba CTO Zhang Jianfeng.

"It seems like whatever problem reaches Duolong's hands can always be solved effortlessly," said colleague Ziliu.

"Once, our team spent three days trying to solve an Apache server crash problem without finding the cause. We consulted Duolong, and he gave us the answer three minutes later," said another colleague Shude.

Now, as the coding legend leaves, netizens are filled with emotion. On Weibo, some wish him "smooth sailing after leaving," while others admire him for "continuing to code after achieving financial freedom."

"My idea is simple: find something I'm interested in doing. When you have something to do, you won't feel it's hard work," Cai Jingxian once said.

After taking his new position, he will continue exploring and moving forward in this world composed of 0s and 1s.