Zhang Kuo, president of Alibaba’s international wholesale marketplace, expects the AI initiative to help sellers and buyers on the platform

More than half of the roughly 200,000 merchants on Alibaba.com were already using its AI applications on a weekly basis, company president Zhang Kuo told the South China Morning Post in an interview on Monday. Alibaba owns the Post.

Introduced in early 2024, these AI tools are designed to assist sellers in marketing, product management, customer engagement and risk control – which form part of efforts to expand Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce business.

“I believe that by the end of this year, [the adoption rate] should be 100 per cent,” Zhang said. “In the end, when they feel that these parts are easier to manage and [the AI agents] provide better performance … those parts should be taken care of by AI.”

“We have confidence in that,” he said.

His assessment reflects Hangzhou-based Alibaba’s sharpened focus on cloud computing and AI, following the company’s commitment to invest at least 380 billion yuan (US$52 billion) to enhance its infrastructure related to those technologies over the next three years. That marks the largest-ever computing project financed by a single private business in China.

Zhang Kuo, president of Alibaba’s international wholesale marketplace, expects the AI initiative to help sellers and buyers on the platform

More than half of the roughly 200,000 merchants on Alibaba.com were already using its AI applications on a weekly basis, company president Zhang Kuo told the South China Morning Post in an interview on Monday. Alibaba owns the Post.

Introduced in early 2024, these AI tools are designed to assist sellers in marketing, product management, customer engagement and risk control – which form part of efforts to expand Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce business.

“I believe that by the end of this year, [the adoption rate] should be 100 per cent,” Zhang said. “In the end, when they feel that these parts are easier to manage and [the AI agents] provide better performance … those parts should be taken care of by AI.”

“We have confidence in that,” he said.

His assessment reflects Hangzhou-based Alibaba’s sharpened focus on cloud computing and AI, following the company’s commitment to invest at least 380 billion yuan (US$52 billion) to enhance its infrastructure related to those technologies over the next three years. That marks the largest-ever computing project financed by a single private business in China.