Wu sought to return Alibaba's focus to its core e-commerce and cloud businesses and trim down some of the other initiatives the company had plunged into, moving away from the idea of Alibaba as several separate divisions.
Artificial intelligence moved front and center, with Wu and Tsai suggesting the company needed to adopt a startup mentality to keep up with the competition.
"Large companies move very slow and it's because the decision-making structure is too complicated ... So we really needed to get back to nimbleness and act fast," Tsai said at the CNBC CONVERGE LIVE event in Singapore earlier this month, adding that quick decision-making is key to competing with startup rivals.