Alibaba.com to Add Agentic AI Capabilities to B2B eCommerce Platform

Alibaba.com plans to add agentic artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to its B2B eCommerce platform in December.

The new AI Mode feature will help businesses discover, evaluate and engage with suppliers, the company said in a Friday (Nov. 14) press release.

For example, AI Mode will deliver tailored recommendations to businesses in seconds by interpreting natural language queries, analyzing technical specifications, and comparing suppliers’ pricing, logistics, certifications and production capabilities, according to the release.

Alibaba.com also aims to provide a fully automated, end-to-end trade experience by connecting AI Mode with the platform’s existing services such as secure payment, Trade Assurance and after-sales support, the release said.

“AI is no longer a supplementary tool at Alibaba.com — it’s evolving into the operating system of our platform,” Alibaba.com President Kuo Zhang said in the release.

AI Mode is powered by Alibaba.com’s AI-powered B2B search engine Accio, which was launched in 2024, according to the release.

Accio can extract meaning from product sketches, engineering blueprints, documents, certificates, factory capabilities and track records, and other unstructured inputs, per the release.

“This capability unlocks what Alibaba.com calls the ‘hidden product shelf’: the vast network of specialized, custom or regionally focused suppliers — often high-potential SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] — whose expertise remains invisible under traditional, keyword-driven discovery models,” the release said.

When Alibaba.com unveiled Accio in November 2024, it was reported that this AI-powered search engine was designed to help small businesses in Europe and the Americas source supplies.

The search engine uses the company’s large language model, Tongyi Qianwen (Qwen), and its data comes from 50 million businesses on Alibaba International’s platform as well as publicly available information.

PYMNTS reported in July that Alibaba had resharpened its focus on AI and eCommerce by paring away non-core businesses and concentrating on the user experience and having AI everywhere.

In August, Alibaba Group said that during the quarter ended June 30, the company saw year-over-year revenue growth of 2%, or 10% when revenue from two businesses it sold over the past year is excluded.

The company said it was “embarking on a new chapter of entrepreneurship by investing in two strategic pillars of consumption and AI + Cloud.”

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