Jia Yangqing, head of Alibaba Cloud’s computing platform business unit, has resigned from the e-commerce giant to reportedly start a new venture focused on AI infrastructure. According to a report by local media outlet QbitAI on Tuesday, Jia has secured funding for the first round of financing for the new company. Jia, who was also vice president at Alibaba, confirmed his departure from the Chinese tech major in a personal WeChat post, stating that he is leaving to “pursue the next career challenge,” without disclosing any details about exactly what that next challenge entailed. However, he cited “the unique contribution that cloud computing brings to society” as the most attractive moment of his journey at Alibaba. Jia is a well-known expert in the fields of AI and cloud computing, having previously worked for Google and Meta, and is also the author of Caffe, the open-source deep learning software adopted by multiple major tech companies. [QbitAI, in Chinese]