Slack, Alibaba launches agent AI tool for businesses with teams integration projects

Chinese technology giant Alibaba on Tuesday launched Wukong, a new agent artificial intelligence tool for enterprise customers, as the company faces restructuring and increasing competition.

Wukong allows businesses to manage multiple agents through a single interface, while offering “enterprise-grade security infrastructure,” the company said in a statement to CNBC.

The platform, still in its invite-only testing phase, will be able to manage agents that perform tasks such as document editing, approvals, meeting transcription and research. Unlike chatbots that respond to prompts, AI agents can take proactive actions, often requiring broad access to company data and systems, raising privacy and security concerns.

Named after the Monkey King character from the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” Wukong is available as a standalone desktop application or through DingTalk, a cloud-based communication platform. Salesforceof slack.

In addition to DingTalk, which has 20 million corporate users, Alibaba outlined plans to connect Wukong with other messaging platforms, including Slack. Microsoft Teams and Tencent’s WeChat, is expanding access to mobile devices.

Wukong will be gradually integrated into Alibaba’s broader e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Alipay.

Alibaba is the latest company to roll out AI agents. competitor Tencent and startups Zip AI Competing to launch similar products built on OpenClaw, an open-source agent platform developed by Peter Steinberger, he joined Sam Altman’s OpenAI.

The announcement of Alibaba’s new enterprise tool comes at a pivotal moment for the Hangzhou-based company founded by billionaire Jack Ma.

Wukong was unveiled a day after the company announced a reorganization, with the AI ​​agent platform falling under its new Alibaba Token Hub business group.

Along with Wukong, the new business group – which will focus on developing and applying AI tokens – will oversee existing Alibaba units Tongi Laboratory, MaaS Business Line, Quen and AI Innovation and will be led by Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu.

AI tokens refer to units of data or value used in AI systems, including inputs, outputs, or usage related to computing.

In an internal memo published Monday on the company’s news portal Alizilla, Wu described the changes as a “historic opportunity” as the company stands at the “threshold of an (artificial general intelligence) inflection point.”

The shakeup follows the departure of key staff involved in developing Queen, Alibaba’s popular agent chatbot.

On March 4, Lin Junyang, Quen’s former chief technical leader wrote, “Bye my beloved Quen,” signaling his departure from the company in a cryptic post on X.

A day later, Alibaba CEO Wu confirmed Lin’s departure in an internal staff memo reviewed by CNBC, saying the company “has accepted Lin Junyang’s resignation and we sincerely thank him for his contributions with us.”

Lin’s resignation marks the third senior departure from Quen’s team this year, following Yu Bowen and Hui Binyuan, who led coaching and coding respectively, according to Reuters.

Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares closed 0.45% higher at 134.6 Hong Kong dollars ($17.17) on Tuesday after Wukong’s announcement. The company is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter 2025 earnings on Thursday.

— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.