Alibaba’s international commerce arm has unveiled Accio Agent, a powerful new AI tool designed to revolutionize how merchants source products and supplies. The new agent aims to automate the complex sourcing process, potentially changing the landscape of global online business.
By the Numbers
The new AI agent is built on a massive scale to deliver significant efficiency gains:
- 70%: The amount of traditional, time-consuming sourcing work the agent is designed to automate.
- 1 Billion: The number of product listings the AI was trained on to understand the market.
- 50 Million: The number of supplier profiles used in its training data.
- 2 Million: The number of users on its predecessor, the Accio B2B search engine.
From Weeks to Minutes: The Power of ‘Agentic Purchase’
Accio Agent represents a major step forward in “agentic purchasing”—the use of AI agents to handle the entire procurement process from product discovery to fulfillment. Alibaba claims the tool can reduce weeks of market research and sourcing work to just a few minutes. It operates like a dedicated team of professionals, handling tasks like product ideation, compliance checks, and identifying suppliers simultaneously. This drastically cuts costs and speeds up operations, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.
More Than Sourcing: A Tool for Product Creation
Beyond finding existing products, Accio Agent can also help merchants design new ones. A user can provide a product concept, and the agent will generate a detailed development report complete with market insights, compliance recommendations, and a list of potential suppliers. This capability lowers the barrier for entrepreneurs to innovate and bring unique products to market. The agent is powered by Alibaba’s own Qwen large language model, giving it a deep understanding of the B2B landscape.
Looking Ahead: A New Era for Global E-commerce
The launch of Accio Agent is part of a broader race among global tech giants, including Amazon, to deploy AI agents that could fundamentally reshape e-commerce, search, and advertising. For the thousands of SMEs and online merchants across the MENA region who rely on international sourcing, tools like Accio Agent could be a game-changer, dramatically lowering barriers to entry and accelerating business growth.
Source: South China Morning Post
