NVIDIA AI Podcast AI Agents and the Future of Global Trade with Alibaba’s Kuo Zhang - Ep. 291
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Feb 27, 2026 Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com and leader of its AI commerce efforts, explains how AI agents like Accio are transforming global B2B trade. He describes automating complex sourcing, compressing weeks of work into minutes, and enabling solo entrepreneurs and SMEs to access suppliers and design products. The conversation highlights agent orchestration, compliance across markets, and real-world use cases like large-scale event sourcing.
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Why B2B Global Trade Still Feels Hard
- Global B2B still has high friction from language, time zones, trust, payments, logistics, and after-sales complexity.
- Kuo Zhang argues these layers made B2B different from B2C and motivated building Axio to address them with AI-native workflows.
Users Talk To Search In Full Sentences
- Users shifted from terse keyword search to longer natural-language requests describing scenarios, dimensions, protections, and visuals.
- Axio breaks sentences into elements, understands context like portable battery use-case, and matches suited products and suppliers.
Search Evolved Into Executing Agents
- Axio evolved from search to agent: it not only finds results but executes complex tasks end-to-end and collaborates with other agents.
- Kuo Zhang notes only ~30% of users needed initial coverage because agents lowered barriers to entry for many buyers.