At its inaugural flagship event CoCreate Europe in London, Alibaba.com launched ‘AI Mode’ – a new feature which integrates agentic AI capabilities directly into the user journey. The launch marks a new direction for AI-driven global trade and a pivotal moment in the company’s evolution into an agentic AI-powered e-commerce platform.
The announcement comes amid strong platform momentum: European order volume has surged 57% year-on-year, while the number of active suppliers worldwide has grown by 50% compared to the same period last year. These gains reflect rising confidence among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in cross-border trade and set the stage for Alibaba.com’s next strategic phase: embedding artificial intelligence at the core of the global trade experience.
AI Mode, set to roll out this December, represents a reimagining of how businesses discover, evaluate, and engage with suppliers in the $30 trillion B2B market.
A Defining Strategic Bet on Agentic AI
With almost 90% of B2B buyers now using AI tools in sourcing and evaluation and AI driving more than half of all online searches, demand for intelligent, accurate and actionable insights has reached an inflection point.
Following the company’s September 2025 announcement to augment its traditional keyword-based search with deep search, powered by large language models, Alibaba.com now takes the next step with AI Mode: integrating agentic AI capabilities directly into the user journey.
Once live, AI Mode will interpret natural language queries, analyze technical specifications, and automatically compare suppliers across pricing, logistics, certifications, and production capabilities, delivering tailored recommendations in seconds. By connecting deeply with existing Alibaba.com services such as secure payment, Trade Assurance and after-sales support, AI Mode aims to enable a fully automated, end-to-end trade experience.
AI is no longer a supplementary tool at Alibaba.com – it’s evolving into the operating system of our platform.
– Kuo Zhang, President, Alibaba.com
Unlocking the “Hidden Product Shelf”
AI Mode is powered by Accio, the world’s first AI-powered B2B search engine, launched in 2024 and now significantly enhanced. With advanced multimodal understanding, Accio can extract meaning from unstructured inputs, including product sketches, engineering blueprints, documents, certificates and factory capabilities and track records, and match them with relevant manufacturing capabilities.
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 – whose expertise remains invisible under traditional, keyword-driven discovery models.
By surfacing these suppliers, AI Mode can help SMEs do better in terms of product innovation and improve supply chain resilience.
Building on Momentum: Europe eyeing AI-Driven Trade
The surge in European orders reflects a broader shift in the region’s business landscape. Today, 90% of European SMEs cite product innovation as critical to their growth strategy, according to Alibaba.com research carried out by Censuswide, and 62% express confidence in using AI tools to drive innovation in design, sourcing, and production.
Fueled by tightening sustainability regulations, supply chain diversification needs and increasing competition, European businesses are turning to smarter, faster, and more transparent sourcing solutions. AI Mode is designed precisely for this environment, helping buyers navigate compliance, identify sustainable partners, and bring customized products to market faster, all without expanding internal teams.
As Alibaba.com deepens its commitment to European SMEs, AI Mode stands as both a technological milestone and a strategic enabler, empowering businesses to compete globally, innovate efficiently and source with greater intelligence.
