"Making Agents Accessible to All" | A Conversation with Xu Qing (President of Alibaba Cloud Wuying Division) and An Chen (Product Lead at AgentBay)

China's tech executives are a formidable but generally low-key bunch, rarely stepping out for long-form podcast interviews.

This week, Crossroads features exactly that kind of behind-the-scenes heavyweight: Zhang Xiantao (Xuqing), president of Alibaba Cloud's Wuying (Shadowless) Business Unit. He has long led Alibaba Cloud's Elastic Compute team, guiding them through the design and implementation of the "X-Dragon" architecture. This architecture established Alibaba Cloud's distinctive position in the global cloud computing industry and has earned broad international recognition at technical conferences and in academic papers.

Xuqing's topic with us: Agent Infra.

2025 is the Year of the Agent. Eight out of ten entrepreneurs are building one. Crossroads has conducted extensive interviews and evaluations on this over the past few months, and found that what determines an agent's capability ceiling isn't just the model itself, nor just engineering and interaction polish — infrastructure matters too. Agent Infra.

Memory, Tool Use, Task Planning, Runtime, Multi-Agent collaboration, security and privacy mechanisms — every piece is indispensable. It's like when a new employee joins: we get them a computer, an ethernet cable, and also provide DingTalk, Lark, email, and various AI productivity tools. If the infrastructure isn't built out, both agents and new hires are left twiddling their thumbs.

Where there are challenges, there are opportunities — so whether startups or tech giants, everyone is doubling down on Agent Infra. AgentBay, launched by Alibaba Cloud's Wuying team, represents a fresh attempt: providing cloud-based sandboxes, compute, and toolchains for agents, building out a complete runtime environment.

This week, we invite:

• Zhang Xiantao (Xuqing) | President, Alibaba Cloud Wuying Business Unit
• Qu Liwei (Anchen) | Product Lead, Alibaba Cloud AgentBay

Together with us, they'll explore the past, present, and future of Agent Infra — from technical principles to industry landscape, from strategic judgment to organizational transformation, to the opportunity map for entrepreneurship and investment.

If you're a developer, founder, or investor, this is the episode that will help you truly understand Agent Infra.

🟢 Part 1: The Agent Infra Landscape

04:49 What is Agent Infra? How does it differ from traditional AI Infra?

07:26 Why did Agent Infra become an industry focus this year, of all years?

09:20 The six pillars of Agent Infra: memory, tool use, task orchestration, sandbox, multi-agent collaboration, security

10:07 Across different tracks and products, who are you watching most closely?

12:44 Which link holds the highest value? Which is most easily overlooked?

13:29 Should Agent developers build in-house or use third-party solutions?

🟢 Part 2: Wuying AgentBay

16:00 Why did Wuying choose to build AgentBay? What's the product path?

18:58 The sandbox wars: AgentBay vs. E2B — differences and advantages?

22:30 Benchmarking against AWS AgentCore: similarities and differences

26:52 Is cloud sandbox secure? How to alleviate developer concerns

32:51 How much concurrency counts as strong? The story behind 200,000 sessions

🟢 Part 3: Opportunities and Choices

36:24 On AgentBay, which Agent products are most numerous and growing fastest?

39:09 Cloud PC business is still growing rapidly — why pivot to Agent Infra?

45:18 Manus: "We were never just an AI, but always a one-of-a-kind 'personal cloud computing platform'"

🟢 Part 4: Management and Career

43:46 As a Big Tech executive, what's hardest about spearheading a new track?

48:50 The career journey of an "elastic compute god-level expert"

58:22 How to spot trends two years ahead?

01:04:02 How to convince your boss to invest in a new direction?

01:06:03 Closing彩蛋: A recruiting invitation

Subscribe to the Crossroads podcast 🚦 We track the industry shifts and entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new wave of AI technology.

🚦 Crossroads is Steve Jobs' metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming every industry. We seek out, interview, and bring together a new generation of AI founders and proactive builders of the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace the new changes, the new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: I co-founded Jiepang / The Fair / Tangdao, and started AI Hacker House, a community space for the new generation of AI founders. I believe technology, especially AI, represents the greatest value-creation opportunity of our generation. Feel free to reach out to chat, bounce ideas, and connect on what's next. Koji on Jike, Koji's website

👧🏻 Host Ronghui: I've worked at a dollar-denominated VC and spent five years as a Silicon Valley correspondent, tracking technological development and business stories. Feel free to reach out and exchange ideas. Ronghui on Jike

🎄 This podcast is supported by The Fair Sound Forest Podcast Initiative.