On August 19, less than a week after quietly changing his internal Alibaba status to "retired from the industry," Cai Jingxian (nicknamed "Duolong") has already made his next move. This technical expert, known as "Taobao's first programmer," has officially joined Beilian Zhuguan as a technical partner.

On August 18, Lin Hao (nicknamed "Bixuan"), founder and CEO of Beilian Zhuguan and former Alibaba P10 technical expert, stated in a public post: "It's quite magical that neither Duolong nor I expected that in the AI era, we would have the opportunity and destiny to collaborate again. This involves using AI Agents to transform operations and maintenance services, allowing every company to have multiple 'Duolongs' in different fields, thereby improving the quality and efficiency of operations services."

The accompanying image in the post showed that Duolong joined Beilian Zhuguan on August 6, which is speculated to be his first day at work. In early August, Duolong's status on Alibaba's internal network quietly changed to "retired from the industry." From joining Alibaba on August 1, 2000, to officially leaving this year, he served at Alibaba for a full 25 years.

**Once Alibaba's Most Low-Key Partner**

In 2000, after graduating with a master's degree in biology from Hangzhou University, Cai Jingxian joined the then-startup Alibaba. In 2003, Jack Ma brought him into a secret project where he worked with two other engineers to build a website called "Taobao" from scratch, responsible for constructing the trading system and forum architecture.

Cai Jingxian was not only Taobao's first programmer but also one of its founders. Due to his focus on technology, a saying circulated among Alibaba's technical staff: "When in trouble, find Duolong." From the launch of Taobao's first version in May 2003 until 2007, he single-handedly maintained Taobao's entire search engine.

Starting in 2014, Cai Jingxian served as a senior researcher at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Business Group, focusing on cloud computing technology research and development. In April of the same year, he passed the review of the Partner Nomination Committee and officially became an Alibaba Group partner in September, recognized for his record-breaking contributions to Taobao's business and his purely focused technical characteristics.

In 2017, Cai Jingxian appeared on the Hurun Wealth List with assets worth 2.6 billion yuan, ranking 1,629th. He was 41 years old that year.

In July 2023, information from Alibaba's annual report showed that Cai Jingxian no longer held the position of Group Partner. This adjustment coincided with Alibaba's "1+6+N" organizational restructuring, with Cai continuing as a senior researcher at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Business Group.

In early August 2025, his status on Alibaba's internal network changed to "retired from the industry," officially ending his 25-year career at Alibaba.

**Beilian Zhuguan's Founding Team All Worked at Alibaba**

This morning, topics related to "Taobao's first programmer's new destination revealed" trended on social media. Beilian Zhuguan, the company Cai Jingxian joined, has also become a focus of attention.

According to corporate records, Beilian Zhuguan was established in November 2021, headquartered in Hangzhou, with registered capital of 10 million yuan. Its business scope includes software development, technical services, technology development, and technical consulting. Lin Hao is the ultimate beneficiary, holding approximately 86.67% of the ultimate beneficial shares.

Since its establishment, Beilian Zhuguan has completed two rounds of financing. In July 2023, it secured 50 million yuan in angel round funding from investors including Matrix Partners China, Sequoia China Seed Fund, and Zhouxuan Investment. In October 2024, it obtained tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing from investors including Innovation Works, West Lake Technology Investment, and Matrix Partners China.

According to Beilian Zhuguan's official website, all six core founding members previously worked at Alibaba. Founder and CEO Bixuan worked at Alibaba for 14 years, participating in and leading the design and implementation of multiple important technological evolutions at Alibaba. Co-founder Lin Xuan worked at Alibaba for 11 years, while partner Mo San is a former Alibaba P9 who built Alibaba Cloud's transportation industry architect team.

**Entering AI Becomes New Destination for Departing Alibaba Technical Experts**

Speaking of the hottest keywords in the technology field over the past two years, AI definitely makes the list. Like Cai Jingxian, most technical experts who have left Alibaba have entered the AI industry.

In March 2023, former Alibaba Vice President Jia Yangqing announced his departure from Alibaba on social media, stating he would move on to the next challenge in his career. Subsequently, he founded AI infrastructure company Lepton AI, whose main business involves renting NVIDIA GPU servers and developing software to help startups build and manage their applications in the cloud. In April 2025, the company was acquired by NVIDIA, with both Jia Yangqing and Lepton's other co-founder Bai Junjie joining NVIDIA. Bai Junjie previously worked at Alibaba Cloud, serving as former AI Platform Director and leading full-stack AI engineering teams.

In February 2024, Yan Zhijie, head of the Tongyi Qianwen voice team, left Alibaba. He was one of the thirteen core founding members of Alibaba's DAMO Academy, a P10-level technical expert responsible for developing Alibaba's "Tongyi Tingwu" technology and an important founder of Alibaba's voice AI technology system. After leaving Alibaba, Yan briefly joined Tencent and was recently reported to have switched to JD Explore Academy.

In July 2024, Zhou Chang, a key member of Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen large model team, was reported to have left. He joined Alibaba in July 2017, serving as a senior algorithm expert at DAMO Academy's Intelligent Computing Laboratory, leading the team in designing and implementing the ultra-large-scale multimodal pre-training model M6, which was the predecessor to Alibaba's Tongyi large model. One month after leaving, Zhou Chang joined ByteDance, with recent news indicating he has taken over as head of ByteDance's visual large model.

Additionally, Bo Liefeng, former head of Alibaba's Tongyi Vision team, joined Tencent's Hunyuan large model after leaving. Former Alibaba Cloud Vice President Chen Xuesong was reported to potentially enter the AI track after departure. Former DAMO Academy senior technical expert Hu Yunhua joined large model unicorn Zhipu AI after leaving, among others.

It's understood that besides the aforementioned Alibaba technical experts, many core personnel from major tech companies have left over the past two years, either transforming or starting businesses, all focusing on the AI track. Their movements represent not only personal choices but also drive the commercial implementation of AI technology.