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Wang Jian, the founder of Alibaba Cloud, has returned to Alibaba Group Holding as a full-time staffer just as the Hangzhou-based conglomerate is carrying out a sweeping business restructure, according to people familiar with the matter.
Wang, 60, is expected to take over the helm at Alibaba's cloud operations, which is seen as the future of the group and is currently under the direct management of Daniel Zhang Yong, the group's chairman and CEO, according to the sources, who asked not to be named as the information is not public. Alibaba is the owner of the South China Morning Post.
The news of Wang's return was first reported by Chinese media outlets.
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Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter and has not made any official announcement regarding Wang's return or his job title.
Wang is widely seen as the man who laid the technological foundations to facilitate Alibaba's emergence as an e-commerce giant.
In his book Being Online, published in 2016, Wang detailed his experiences building up Alibaba's cloud business from scratch with the trust of founder Jack Ma.
Li Qiang, then governor of Zhejiang province and China's premier, wrote in a forward for the book that he enjoyed talking with both Wang and Ma.
"In talking to Jack Ma, I get 'There's actually a new perspective to see the issue,'" he wrote. Whereas, Li wrote, when talking to Wang Jian, "I get, 'The future may actually be like this.'"
When Wang, who has a doctorate in psychology, joined Alibaba in 2008 from Microsoft Research Asia, the concept of cloud computing was still in its infancy, but Wang's vision convinced Ma and he built up the cloud business for Alibaba despite repeated internal questioning, according to local media reports.
Ma wrote in a forward for his book that "when I first met Dr Wang, I was mesmerised by his understanding of the internet and hated the fact that I could not have met him earlier".
Wang resigned from his role at Alibaba Cloud in 2013 but retained a position as honorary chairman of the Alibaba Group Technology Committee.
Alibaba is currently at a critical juncture in its history, and is going through a restructuring from a large conglomerate into a collection of several relatively independent businesses, Alibaba Cloud being one of them.