By LI Jingya

Alibaba Cloud's office collaboration platform Ding Talk is to split from the parent company and go it alone.

In 2020, Jeff Zhang, chief of Alibaba’s research institute, combined cloud infrastructure with Ding and in September of the same year, Ding Talk was upgraded and integrated with Alibaba Cloud.

Initially, Alibaba Cloud aimed to make Ding Talk its operating system, but the separation suggests a shift in perspective. Integrating Ding Talk, a cost-intensive and profit-challenged SaaS product, impacted Alibaba Cloud's profitability.

Despite the split, Alibaba Cloud and Ding Talk will continue to cooperate closely. Ding Talk’s COO, KU Wei, will reportedly remain with Alibaba Cloud.

Ding Talk has a user base exceeding 600 million and is Alibaba’s fourth-largest app. However, commercialization remains a challenge, with only around 2.5 percent of its users opting for paid services.