Alibaba Group Holding's international wholesale marketplace, Alibaba.com, expects all sellers on the platform to adopt its artificial intelligence (AI) tools by the end of this year, as the e-commerce giant boosts its investment in the technology.

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.

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"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.

Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen artificial intelligence models have become part of the company's advanced capabilities that support e-commerce expansion at home and abroad. Photo: Shutterstock alt=Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen artificial intelligence models have become part of the company's advanced capabilities that support e-commerce expansion at home and abroad. Photo: Shutterstock>

In a quarterly earnings call last month, Alibaba chief executive Eddie Wu Yongming said the group's primary focus was to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), which he defined as the point when the technology would be able to achieve 80 per cent of human capabilities. Wu anticipated AGI would reshape industries around the world.

Large language models (LLMs) - the technology that underpins generative AI services like ChatGPT and DeepSeek's namesake chatbot - represent the third big shift driving the business of global trade, following the transition from desktop to mobile computing, and the growth of "trust mechanisms" such as global online payments networks, according to Zhang.

He pointed out that buyers who had relied on keywords and filters to search for products on Alibaba.com were now able to ask questions more conversationally and receive a sophisticated response.

"If I want to build a coffee shop in New York or I want to build a ski resort in a desert with US$50 million, these can be the questions I can ask the engine and then it can give me not only a product list, but also a business plan and guidelines to help me do it step by step," Zhang said.

Alibaba in November also launched AI search engine Accio, which allows for more efficient product sourcing by merchants.

Used by more than 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as of January, Accio has compiled a catalogue of millions of suppliers spanning more than 7,600 product categories, according to the company. Notably, its "inspiration" feature led to an almost 30 per cent jump in search engine users who requested quotations from merchants, Alibaba said.

The AI tools on Alibaba.com are built on multiple LLMs: Alibaba's own Qwen family for Chinese-language users, DeepSeek's AI models for reasoning capabilities, and Meta Platforms' Llama series for accurate translation and computation.

AI translation is especially beneficial for Alibaba.com users in key international markets, such as Europe. According to Zhang, the technology has helped suppliers respond to inquiries in French, German and other foreign languages, enabling both buyers and sellers to be more comfortable in making bulk purchases, which averaged at US$3,000 per order.

"We're basically leveraging everything that we have to help the merchants and buyers on this platform," he said.

Zhang dismissed concerns about a heightened US-China trade war, following US President Donald Trump's recent decision to impose an additional 10 per cent tariff on Chinese imports.

Despite the challenges, Alibaba.com has seen double-digit growth in the number of suppliers on the platform both domestically and internationally since the start of the year, according to Zhang. "More and more SMEs are using our platform to do digital trade globally to reach more customers, so we believe that this trend will continue," he said.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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