Alibaba International have announced that its AI-powered B2B search engine for product sourcing, Accio, has reached a significant milestone since its launch in November 2024, currently boasting over 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) users.
Cataloging Millions of Global Suppliers
Accio uses natural language processing to enhance search capabilities, enabling SME buyers to intuitively find the products they need. The search engine now catalogs millions of suppliers worldwide, aiming to connect SME buyers with ideal partners to turn their product concepts into successful business ventures. Spanning over 7,600 product categories, Accio is rigorously trained on more than 200 million trade industry-specific parameters.
Since its launch, the Accio Inspiration feature has resulted in a significant increase of nearly 30% in conversion rates for suppliers—from search to requesting quotations.
Holiday Season Performance
During the peak global e-commerce sales seasons in November and December, more than 50,000 SMEs worldwide have actively used Accio to source inspirations for Black Friday and Christmas inventory stocking. User feedback shows that the search engine helped them achieve this efficiently.
Accio now holds a net promoter score (NPS) exceeding 50 indicating a high level of customer satisfaction. On December 13, 2024, the dynamic search engine was also named “Product of the Day” on Product Hunt, a site that curates new products in tech, further cementing its status as an indispensable tool for SME buyers worldwide.
Global B2B Trade Enters AI Search Era
Alibaba International launched Accio at a critical juncture for both the development of AI tools and the B2B global trade market.
Unlike traditional keyword searches, Accio is built to enable searches in natural language. This shift represents a significant advancement in search technology, allowing users to interact with the search engine in a more intuitive and conversational manner. Currently, it supports English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, with additional languages planned for future updates.
The Accio Page feature offers a dynamic interface that reconstructs product information in a familiar and user-friendly format. It provides objective product details and comparisons with similar items, enabling businesses to make informed sourcing decisions with ease.
Complementing this, Accio Agent simplifies the follow-up process for inquiries, payments and after-sales support, effectively acting as a professional sourcing agent through Alibaba International’s robust infrastructure.
As AI emerges as the next frontier, Accio is set to usher in a new era of B2B global trade in which SMEs and large corporations alike can efficiently sort through the sea of available information and make informed purchasing decisions while saving time and money on key sourcing and logistics operations.
