Founder Chen Hang Returns — Four Months of Rapid Transformation for DingTalk

After more than four months back at the helm as CEO of DingTalk, Chen Hang found himself making headlines—not at the company’s 10th anniversary press conference, but for a late-night “spot check” that earned him the nickname “the most relentless CEO” on social media.

The incident began when Chen stayed up late in deep discussion with a product team. After he proposed changes, the team—project lead included—didn’t follow up promptly. This prompted Chen to call for stricter attendance and performance review standards, sparking lively online debate among employees.

An insider at DingTalk revealed that since his return, Chen has been operating at full throttle, focusing his efforts on sharpening organizational management, especially in product and R&D operations.

On August 25, Chen publicly addressed the trending topic during the launch of DingTalkZen, a tool designed to let users relax with natural scenery and ambient sounds after hours of intense work. “People at DingTalk aren’t just about work,” he said. “We have vibrant lives too.”

Still, his expectations remain clear—his mantra, “Be Crazy”, is boldly printed on the back of his black T-shirt.

From “Digital Cage” to Visionary Ambition

Since its launch in 2015, DingTalk’s clock-in and attendance features have led many employees across China to call it a “digital cage.” Inside Alibaba, its founding team was nicknamed “the asylum,” and Chen, in addition to his alias “Wu Zhao,” became known as the “head of the asylum” for his workaholic drive.

Under his leadership, DingTalk grew from zero to 300 million users in six years, dominating the online office market. Then, in 2021, Chen made the unexpected decision to leave Alibaba and found TwoHydrogenOneOxygen Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

On March 31, 2025, following Alibaba Group’s acquisition of TwoHydrogenOneOxygen, Chen officially returned as CEO of DingTalk—bringing back several senior executives who had joined him in his entrepreneurial venture.

Before his return, Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming had already singled out DingTalk’s importance at a February earnings call, noting the role AI would play in reshaping enterprise collaboration and declaring DingTalk to be Alibaba’s flagship ToB AI application.

With Alibaba’s 380 billion RMB AI “Long March” investment announced in February, Chen’s mission is clear: lead the rollout of AI-powered enterprise collaboration solutions at scale.

A “Ground Zero” Mindset

Chen has always valued operational independence. But in 2020, DingTalk was folded into Alibaba Cloud under a “cloud-office integration” strategy, and Chen was reassigned before eventually leaving to start his own company.

By the time he returned in 2025, DingTalk had seen over two years without a major product upgrade, stuck on version 7.0 since December 2022. That changed quickly.

DingTalk 8.0 became Chen’s first major product push. During user research, he heard one message loud and clear: “DingTalk is too bloated.” While streamlining the platform, he also uncovered a gap between internal metrics and real customer experience.

Customer service reported a 15% escalation rate and “all five-star reviews,” but Chen’s field visits told another story: users complained about irrelevant answers, year-long delays in meeting requests, and no clear way to reach human support.

One long-term corporate client had switched to rival Feishu after years of poor service feedback, citing faster innovation and better feature delivery from the competition—though acknowledging Feishu’s higher fees also sent price-sensitive SMEs back to DingTalk.

To get to the truth, Chen launched a “Go to the Front Lines” initiative, requiring all product, engineering, and operations staff to work two hours per day in customer service. The results were eye-opening: real customer satisfaction was only 30%.

After restructuring teams to blend AI expertise with business knowledge, DingTalk rebuilt its customer service system from the ground up—forming new data engineering, model training, and performance evaluation units. By launch day, customer satisfaction had jumped to 80% and costs had fallen by 90%.

Chen’s “ground zero” mindset mirrors Wu Yongming’s call for a “restart” culture at Alibaba—abandoning complacency, reigniting the founder’s entrepreneurial spirit, and rebuilding DingTalk’s culture around authentic user experience.

Product Reinvention

In just four months, Chen’s team has processed 1,850 requirement analyses, fixed 574 issues, and optimized over 20 product lines. They’ve also launched a dozen innovation groups focused on AI scenarios and tools.

His central question: If we rebuilt DingTalk from scratch in the AI era, what would it look like?

DingTalk had already integrated Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen large model in 2023, amassing over 1.41 million AI applications for everything from document automation to market forecasting. But Chen recognized the pitfalls of “tool overload” and shifted the mission: DingTalk wouldn’t just be a toolbox—it would reinvent work itself with AI.

On August 25, DingTalk unveiled 8.0 and AI DingTalk 1.0, featuring five key products: DingTalk ONE, DingTalkA1, AI Notes, AI Search & Ask, and AI Sheets. The ultra-thin, magnetically attachable DingTalkA1 AI recorder drew particular attention, designed to seamlessly convert spoken conversations into actionable data in partnership with AI Notes.

With 97% speech recognition accuracy after 100 million hours of dedicated training, DingTalk is betting on a hardware-software ecosystem to own the future of AI-powered workplace recording and analysis.

Results-Driven Strategy

Traditionally, SaaS platforms charge subscription fees regardless of outcomes. DingTalk is breaking that mold with results-based pricing across its AI ecosystem—from hardware to templates and assistants. “Pay only if it works,” Chen emphasized.

The strategy scales across tiers:

• Large enterprises get custom AI deployments and branding.
• Startups receive AI assistants designed for “one-person companies.”
• Global companies can deploy a single, multilingual, compliance-ready DingTalk instance.

For example, the “One DingTalk” solution cuts overseas collaboration costs from 2,000 RMB to 500 RMB per employee per year.

For Chen, DingTalk is no longer a “collaboration tool”—it’s a self-evolving intelligent entity. As Shenzhen-based tech firm Shokz described after five years of use: “DingTalk is more than an app—it’s a living, learning workplace partner.”

Now, with AI DingTalk 1.0, Chen is steering a thousand-person organization through a high-stakes transformation—one that will test not only DingTalk’s market position, but also the adaptability of China’s software industry in the face of a new AI-powered era.