Scaling Enterprise Productivity Through Agentic AI and Workflow Automation - with Kuo Zhang of Alibaba.com

Welcome

everyone to the AI in business podcast. I'm Matthew Demello, editorial director here at Emerge AI Research. Today's guest is Kuo Zhang, president of alibaba.com. For the holiday season here in The States, we wanted to feature exclusive audio from a recent interview we conducted with Kuo at this year's co create event in Las Vegas hosted by Alibaba. The interview you'll hear today took place immediately after Kuo's keynote at the event where he expanded on how AgenTik AI is lowering barriers to global sourcing for SMBs and re shaping how enterprises think about procurement, supplier discovery, and operational efficiency.

Throughout our conversation, he describes a future in which teams of any size can move from idea to execution with far fewer bottlenecks supported by real supplier data, automated sourcing workflows, and increasingly self directed digital agents. Kuo also highlights the practical workflow changes emerging from this shift. How AI reduces time spent on manual supplier communication, how automated sourcing and trade assurance streamline global transactions, how enterprises can enable employees to use AI to increase throughput in sales, engineering, and customer operations, and where leaders are already seeing ROI through faster cycle times, expanded sourcing options, and greater resilience during periods of market volatility. A quick editor's note, we originally recorded this audio strictly for event coverage on emerge.com and thought it might be a little bit too raw for podcast listeners. But with the holiday week upon us and some diligent work from our audio team, we were able to ensure strong listenability and bring our subscribers an exclusive look at how one of the world's largest retail and technology organizations is thinking about the future of AgenTik AI and its impact on global supply chains.

For more with Kuo, you may also remember that earlier this year, we featured him on our new YouTube channel. You can search for AI in business vision to value in enterprise AI on YouTube, where you can find our at length discussion with Kuo covering more on how AgenTik AI is removing barriers that have long held back small and medium sized businesses in global sourcing. That's youtube.com/@emergeairesearch. Again, that's youtube.com/@signemerjairesearch. Watch the full episode now and see how vision becomes value in enterprise AI.

But first, are you driving AI transformation at your organization, or maybe you're guiding critical decisions on AI investment strategy or deployment? If so, the AI business podcast wants to hear from you. Each year, Emerge AI Research features hundreds of executive thought leaders, everyone from the CIO of Goldman Sachs to the head of AI at Raytheon and AI pioneers Yoshua Benghio. With nearly a million annual listeners, AI in business is the go to destination for enterprise leaders navigating real world AI adoption. You don't need to be an engineer or a technical expert to be on the show if you're involved with AI implementation, decision making, or strategy within your company, this is your opportunity to share your insights with a global audience of your peers.

If you believe you can help other leaders move the needle on AI ROI, visit emerge.com and fill out our thought leader submission form. That's emerge.com, and click on be an expert. You can also click the link in the description of today's show on your preferred podcast platform. That's emerge.com/expertone. Again, that's eerj.com/expertone.

We'll be right back with our conversation with Kuo after this brief message. AI agents accelerate workflows, but errors can multiply fast. Rubrik agent cloud provides full visibility, enforces policies, and rewinds actions in minutes. It runs continuously, giving guardrails, tracking activity, and providing a safety net so teams can scale AI without risking critical operations. This segment is sponsored by Rubrik Agent Cloud.

If your business relies on AI agents, you can get exclusive early access to monitor, govern, and rewind their actions at rubrik.com. That's rubrik.com rubrik.com. And without further ado, here's our interview with Kuo. Now we're just about ready for today's conversation with Kuo. Just for some brief context, you'll note that I'm beginning the first question by describing the major points of Kuo's keynote speech at the Cocreate twenty twenty five event in Las Vegas, which just wrapped a few moments before this interview was recorded.

Let's tune in.

What you're using with the Gentic. I think it's one of the clearer visions I've seen of this is gonna change the way we think about getting the whole process done because you're gonna have all of these employees at your disposal. I'm I'm an old my my grandparents owned a owned a cowboy apparel store. You know, they had to buy, you know, jeans in the time of Ronald Reagan and procure it for folks. I only imagine what the business could have been if they had somebody they didn't need to pay a salary necessarily to do small, you know, business procurements.

There I would love to get your thoughts on what you think about, you know, maybe this means overall for kind of competition between SMBs. And also how can enterprises maybe endorse kind of the use of these these sorts of tools in ways that are also gonna accomplish their goals and have maybe have some applications in the

enterprise. Okay.

Go ahead. Yeah.

You have there in the present, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So this year, actually, with there are more than 3,500 entrepreneurs come.

Yeah, right, right. It's nearly double the size of last year. And we need to close ticket a week before. And many of them kind of writing emails to us to kind of reopen and what kind of, because there's space, the room that we cannot hold too much, but you can feel that's a passion of SMEs. They want to be participated in this event and to be compete globally and leveraging global supply chain.

As if this is what everybody wants here. And what blocks them to do so before, is that the trust issues, that you need to spend too much time, and you need expertise on sourcing, on language, and the transportations, the money, and the kind of active protections you can mention. And now the technology can help them to lower the barrier to kind of entry this kind of global competition and leveraging the global supply chain. So this is a major thing that we are talking to them. And we are using agentic AI, so the first thing you can think about key and keyword and search get the list, and click on one product and it's not right, and the other is this is right, and communicate with the suppliers not online, and then come back and do the things Now all you just disrupt your idea.

Starting from kind of helping you to create some of the plans, product designs, prototype, if you like it, it can help you to execute upon who can make this, and to reach out the customers. Actually, there are many product details we did not show today, since it's a time limit. There's a lot that we can help them, for example, to help the buyer to do the auto code, help the buyer to kind of be using a secure way to do the payment, we call the trade assurance, and help them with different variety of deliveries, local warehouse, cross border transportations, and you can name it. So now doing this kind of global sourcing are much much easier than probably five or six years people because of technology.

Absolutely. And I think there's also, you know, don't sell yourself short in that as you mentioned on stage, a lot of it's built on the supplier data. Like, you can't make these kinds of tools, you know, without the real, you know, supplier data.

You may you know, they're they're talking right now on stage about tariffs Mhmm.

As kind of and they we're hearing a lot of the same attitudes between partners, suppliers, everybody saying, you know, hey, we're gonna hold our hands and get through this. Of course, we know it's not that easy. What what do you think there are lessons that kind of carry over from pandemic into they're very different situations, but they are externalities, let's say. They're not they come from the outside and they disrupt normal business, and we've only had this so many years of a normal with a lot of data taken in between. Right?

That's all contaminated. Do you think that that, you know, make helps us prepare for, a moment that we're kind of seeing with the tariffs at all,

or is it completely novel? So for this year, the order growth on alibaba.com in general is more than 30%, and I just checked out the data for September for the first couple of days, it's also more than 33% growth, otherwise year to year. And for US, actually, the order growth from April to now is also more than 20% compared to last year. Which means that more people are leveraging digital supply chains. So back to your question, I think fundamental fundamental principles for business, the first one is demand and supply.

So you have demand, and you need to find the most efficient supplies to fulfill your demand. And what's in between, there are technology, there are how to deliver fast, how to save money, this kind of stuff. But back to the beginning, that is all start from demand and supplies, and that how the things keep the world moving. Right, right. I think we can't comment too much on the policy part, but for the business, yeah, so we are providing all diversified kind of you can pick supplier from all over the world, and you can leverage the technology as much as possible, just to help to make sure you have a competitive edge, of competitors I with

think then kind of like the the most actionable or most valuable data between the two and just ends up being like how fast could you change suppliers based on each tailored situation and did did you know for your particular area in retail manufacturing, etcetera, did mean you had to, you know, kind of rip it up, start again, back from ground zero or was it merely just having that moment as as like as I was just hearing on stage before before walking in here about how oh, we need to kind of, you know, sit and lock arms with everybody that

we're already doing business with and deepen those relationships.

I think either way, you're getting a a more nuance view because you have more data being detected since, you know, a pandemic even to today, but to me the real commonality between those times and these is that you you you might depending on the sector see folks changing all of their supplier base based on, you know, it but they're still completely different spaces. Do you think we're gonna have or or are you optimistic at all from all the kind of data you're taking for supply chains all over the world that we'll get a stronger sense of normal even with these kind of like abnormal events that have kind of, you know, a bookended kind of decade so far. I pan between pandemic and tariffs, it's it's two completely different things, but also that, you know, over and over, we hear again that these are kind of man made and artificial, right, that, you know, it for especially pandemic or especially the tariffs most obviously, it's somebody, you know, putting the limitation on there. Do think you we're gonna get a long enough period that that might be considered normal, or is that kind of the nature of taking in all the data?

You know, it'll always be different. It'll always be novel. You just gotta track all of this as best you can.

What I think people are, how to say, focusing or spending time too much is about the kind of change or turbulence in the near term. But it's more or less actually not focusing enough on the change that probably can influence or can impact for a longer time perspective. I have been in this position since 2017, so as you mentioned, there's a lot of change, including the things that you mentioned. Every year there's new kind of situation. But what I see, what not change, demand and supply.

Demand and supply all of the this

case concept. This is the fundamentals. And the supply, supplies is more and more redundant, more and more rich, and the supplies are fulfilled in more different ways than the suppliers before. And for the demand side, that we see more and more SMBs participating. So for each and every country, actually the internal trade is much bigger than the external trade.

Yeah. So take Europe as example. The inter Europe trade probably is two times or three times than Europe buy and sell outside Europe. Right. So why is that?

That's the major reason, is that people don't, majority of the SMEs don't have the capabilities to do that before. So they need to pick up the phone, call somebody say the same language, so they can trust, so they can pay the money, they can kind of get the result, get the And if technology platform, data, AI, that can help you to lower the barrier, every SME can be in the global state. Think that's, in the long run, is a bigger change to the world. Yeah. Yes.

And and we hear we hear

about this future a little bit, like, when we were doing Internet adoption, we heard about this future of Wi Fi, and that still took about, like, ten ish years, eight, ten years before it really felt like it will we had mass adoption. That's the this is really the closest I've seen in a lot of the folks that have been talking about agents up. It really feels like you are the CEO of a five person organization that might do a volume of a business that twenty years ago might needed twice that many people, especially on the retail side. What do you what do you think that means for for the enterprise folks in terms of how to enable their own employees to take best advantage of these tools because they're going to anyway, and how best to, you know, keep up as an enterprise.

So within ivault.com, what do we see that each individual or each role can leverage AI in different ways. So for example, if you are an engineering, they're using AI, you can write much code than before, and twice the code. So every quarter, we have about 300 ideas. So that idea is more or less, but it's around that number. There's only 100 ideas can be applied each quarter because of the engineering capacity.

So now think about, at least I need to done 280. Yeah. To make sure that we can move all things faster. So next next year when we incorporate, I can show you twice the idea that are pretty implemented. I think that is one.

Sales is the same. So they need to do things completely kind of repeat themselves every day. Now we can freeze them of their repetitive works in daily basis. So they can care more about their customers, spend more about their customer services. I said that is one

as well. So you

can name it. Each and every individual roles in alibaba.com that we can find them how to use AI to be a better self. Yeah. Improve their fitness.

Or other it's a

price efficiency or maybe sometimes 10 times.

Right? And it sounds like who's going to survive is who can appropriately judge what that where they balance off of the market share, the demand and the supply versus what they have at their disposal to scale and does it meet meet that sweet spot.

Yeah. No matter if you're

the small or the big or or even the enterprise.

Wrapping up today's episode, I think there were at least three critical takeaways for enterprise leaders focused on data, AI, and global operations to take our conversation today with Kuo Zhang, president of alibaba.com. First, AgenTik AI is beginning to close long standing capability gaps in global sourcing. Tasks that once required specialized expertise, supplier discovery, communication, quality evaluation, and cross border coordination are now becoming more accessible to smaller teams. That shift expands the competitive landscape and increases the urgency for larger enterprises to modernize workflows. Second, AI enabled automation is already delivering measurable efficiency gains inside complex organizations.

From engineering to sales to operational support, leaders can unlock meaningful productivity increases by embedding AI in repeatable tasks and giving employees clear mandates to experiment, iterate, and improve on their workflows. Finally, supply chain resilience is increasingly tied to data diversity and speed of response. External disruptions may always be novel, but organizations that leverage AI to rapidly compare, validate, and transition between suppliers will maintain a stronger competitive edge regardless of sector, scale, or market conditions. Are you driving AI transformation at your organization, or maybe you're guiding critical decisions on AI investments, strategy, or deployment? If so, the AI in business podcast wants to hear from you.

Each year, Emerge AI Research features hundreds of executive thought leaders, everyone from the CIO of Goldman Sachs to the head of AI at Raytheon and AI pioneers like Joshua Bencio. With nearly a million annual listeners, AI in Business is the go to destination for enterprise leaders navigating real world AI adoption. You don't need to be an engineer or a technical expert to be on the show. If you're involved in AI implementation, decision making, or strategy within your company, this is your opportunity to share your insights with a global audience of your peers. If you believe you can help other leaders move the needle on AI ROI, visit emerge.com and fill out our thought leader submission form.

That's emerge.com, and click on be an expert. You can also click the link in the description of today's show on your preferred podcast platform. That's emerge.com/expertone. Again, that's emerj.com/expertone. We look forward to featuring your story.

If you enjoyed or benefited from the insights of today's episode, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or just like most about the show. Also, don't forget to follow us on x, formerly known as Twitter at Emerge, and that's spelled, again, e m e r j, as well as our LinkedIn page. I'm your host, at least for today, Matthew D'Amelo, editorial director here at Emerge AI Research. On behalf of Daniel Fagella, our CEO and head of research, as well as the rest of the team here at Emerge, thanks so much for joining us today, and we'll catch you next time on the AI in business podcast. Podcast.