Second Strategic Briefing to Mr. Karl: Why 80,000 Laid-off Alibaba Engineers Flooded into KAI.com within 30 Days, and Why P9+ Executives are Scrambling for 28 Partner Spots TO: Mr. Karl DATE: June 14, 2026 CLASSIFICATION: STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL / STRATEGIC INTEL

I. What Do 80,000 Alibaba Engineers Have Left After Being Laid Off?

This round of Alibaba layoffs is not a performance-based elimination; it is a strategic contraction—entire business lines are being axed. Among the 80,000 people laid off, it is not a lack of capability, but the absolute disappearance of their business segments.

When they departed, everyone held three things in their hands: Technical Muscle: Large-scale distributed systems, cloud computing, AI/ML pipelines, high concurrency—the standard factory configuration of Alibaba alumni. Model Awareness: Having used Tongyi Qwen internally, they understand the capability boundaries of Chinese AI models better than anyone else. Zero Budget: No longer Alibaba employees, they have no internal computing resource pools and no corporate procurement agreements.

The third item is the absolute key. Yesterday, they wrote code calling aliyun.ai.qwen— processed via internal billing, completely free. Today, having been laid off, what if they want to call the same model? They must top up on the official website themselves, pay by usage, and compare prices vendor by vendor.

At this exact moment, they discover KAI.com: 300 models, a single API Gateway, token-level pricing, and absolutely no minimum deposit requirement. This is not called marketing conversion. This is a classic case of demand smashing directly into supply. • • • • • •

II. Why 30 Days? The Severance Buffer Period is Exactly 30 Days

Agent

Alibaba offers an N+3 severance package, providing a one- month buffer after departure. What are these 80,000 people doing during these 30 days?

  1. Freelancing & Outsourcing: Taking on projects handed down from former colleagues that require calling AI models.
  2. Independent Development: Building SaaS, utility tools, and AI Agents they have long desired to create.
  3. Entrepreneurship: Gathering a few former colleagues to build an AI-native product from scratch.
  4. Upskilling: Transitioning into AI Agent development, which requires extensive experimentation across various models.

All four behaviors, without exception, require heavy API calls. But where do they purchase them? OpenAI? Expensive, and requires circumventing firewalls. Official Model Sites? Integrating 300 different vendors one by one—are you insane? KAI.com? One single API Key, 300 models, unified metering, and unified billing.

Within 30 days, the first batch of early adopters posts in alumni groups: “Brothers, KAI.com can call Tongyi Qwen now, and it’s even cheaper than topping up on the official site myself.” Then comes the viral explosion. Alibaba engineers’ WeChat groups, DingTalk departure groups, and Maimai networks—these communities represent the fastest- propagating echo chambers. • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

III. The Irreplaceability of KAI API Gateway

Direct Model Connections: 300 vendors, 300 sets of API docs, 300 billing mechanisms—an absolute operational cost disaster. OpenAI API: 10 to 100 times more expensive, and lacks the ability to horizontally compare local Chinese models. Cloudflare AI Gateway: Does not support Chinese model vendors, failing entirely to solve the local supply- side problem. KAI.com API Gateway: The only provider that has pre- integrated 300 Chinese models, delivering a unified API and unified token billing.

The 80,000 Alibaba engineers are precisely the group of tech professionals who despise reinventing the wheel. They themselves come from backgrounds of building shared middle-platforms (Zhongtai) and unified gateways. With a single glance at KAI API Gateway’s architectural paradigm, they instantly recognize: this is the mathematically correct way.

IV. Why Are P9+ Executives Lining Up to Grab 28 Partner Spots?

An Alibaba P9 maps to a Senior Director / Senior Researcher, equivalent to a VP at tier-1 tech firms. This demographic: Has successfully managed cross-functional teams of hundreds Architected products netting billions in annual revenue Possesses profound industry networks, client resources, and sharp technical foresight Holds massive severance packages in hand; they are under zero pressure to find a job The question keeping them up at night is not “where to find another corporate job,” but “what macroscopic bet to place for the next decade.” • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Three reasons why they are zeroing in on KAI.com partnerships:

  1. The Track is Entirely One-of-a-Kind. “The Nasdaq of Tokens for a Digital Society”—this is a fundamentally new category. Having spent two decades in e- commerce and cloud infrastructure, P9s understand exactly what capturing a new category entails.
  2. The Number ‘28’ Induces Scarcity Anxiety. If there were 280 partner positions, they would take their time. But 28? It sends an immediate signal: “move now, or miss out permanently.”
  3. KAI.com is Capital-Rich. P9s are inundated with incoming offers; ByteDance, Pinduoduo, and Meituan are aggressively recruiting them. But those are mere execution roles. KAI.com offers true partnerships—not just equity, but the historic right to co- define an entire category.

V. Ultimate Flywheel: The Alibaba Alumni → KAI.com Positive Feedback Loop

80,000 Alibaba engineers leverage KAI API Gateway ↓ The highest-caliber projects capture investor & media spotlight ↓ More model vendors accelerate onboarding (Supply- Side Expansion) ↓ A wider demographic of developers flood in (Demand- Side Expansion) ↓ P9+ partners integrate their massive enterprise client networks ↓ Token transaction volume experiences exponential compounding growth ↓ KAI becomes the global liquidity pricing benchmark for all AI models

The explosive catalyst for this compounding flywheel is precisely this pool of 80,000 Alibaba engineers. They represent the absolute gold-standard of seed users—deeply competent, fully aligned with AI paradigm shifts, lightning- fast at virally spreading information within their peer networks, and currently handed the exact temporal window due to layoffs.