TLDR: A new ‘tripartite rivalry’ is unfolding among China’s e-commerce leaders JD.com, Alibaba, and Meituan, as they aggressively deploy AI agents to secure a pivotal advantage in the evolving digital retail landscape. Each company is unveiling sophisticated AI architectures and intelligent tools, signaling a strategic shift towards AI-driven personalized shopping and operational efficiency.
China’s e-commerce titans, JD.com, Alibaba, and Meituan, are locked in an escalating ‘tripartite rivalry,’ with the battleground increasingly shifting to the development and deployment of advanced AI agents. This strategic pivot aims to capture the future ‘super entry point’ in e-commerce, as the integration of artificial intelligence into online retail accelerates significantly in the latter half of 2025.
JD.com has publicly unveiled its comprehensive AI architecture system for e-commerce, dubbed ‘Oxygen.’ This system is built upon the JD.com JoyAI large model, which has been used to train multiple specialized models, including predictive, generative recommendation, and multimodal models (VLM). Hu Xi, Senior Vice President of JD.com Group and Chairman of the JD.com Group Product Committee, stated that these models serve as the ‘brain’ and decision-making center for intelligent e-commerce. JD.com’s vision includes developing a collaborative ecosystem of functional intelligent agents, such as product display agents, procurement and sales agents, customer service agents, and marketing agents, all working to drive the industry’s intelligent transformation. The company has already made available its multi-agent collaboration framework OxyGent and the Oxygent-9N-xLLM large model inference engine, with more technologies slated for future release. A major update to the JD.com app, expected in October, will introduce new intelligent features, including the smart shopping guide product ‘Aigou’ and virtual reality 3D product displays.
Not to be outdone, Alibaba’s Taobao is also rapidly advancing its AI e-commerce deployment. Taobao has launched several AI-powered features, including an ‘AI Assistant,’ AI Universal Search, and AI Price Comparison. These tools are designed to enhance user shopping efficiency through multi-round dialogues for product searches, personalized recommendations, and competitive price comparisons.
Meituan, a dominant player in local life services, has introduced its own standalone consumer-facing intelligent agent named ‘Xiao Mei.’ This AI agent focuses on optimizing food delivery orders and providing tailored restaurant recommendations, offering intelligent interactive experiences based on users’ historical preferences. This move underscores Meituan’s commitment to leveraging AI to deepen its engagement in the local services sector.
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Industry observers note that while the AI e-commerce sector is still in its early stages, largely focused on experimentation and exploration, the pace of integration is quickening. The deep integration of large-scale models with core business operations has become a primary focus for these e-commerce platforms. This intense competition is not only driving technological innovation but also reshaping the competitive landscape, as companies vie to establish AI agents as the next frontier for customer interaction and operational excellence in digital retail.
