JD.com Unleashes Robot Army in Logistics Revolution

JD.com has unveiled its ambitious Physical AI Acceleration Plan at JDDiscovery 2026 in Beijing, aiming to dramatically expand the integration of artificial intelligence and robotics across its vast logistics network. The company has reiterated its five-year procurement targets, which include acquiring 3 million robots, 1 million autonomous vehicles, and 100,000 delivery drones, signifying a major leap towards hyper-automation.

A core component of this strategy is the new industrial Wolf Robot series, launched by JD Logistics. These robots are designed for a wide array of tasks spanning warehousing, sorting, internal transport, and delivery operations. Specialized systems within this series are engineered to function in extreme conditions, such as temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius, and include advanced automated pharmacy dispatch systems, autonomous delivery vehicles, and sophisticated drones.

This five-year procurement plan builds upon an already extensive foundation of automation within JD Logistics. As of June 30, its LangzuTech Goods-to-Person automated warehousing system was operational in over 30 warehouses across China, with further deployments initiated in the UK and Germany. The company's broader logistics infrastructure includes more than 1,800 self-operated warehouses and over 2,000 third-party cloud warehouses on its Open Warehouse Platform, collectively covering an aggregate area exceeding 36 million square meters. By the end of June, thousands of unmanned vehicles were in regular operation across more than 20 Chinese provinces, complemented by over 100 domestic drone routes facilitating parcel and food delivery, emergency medicine transport, and disaster relief.

JD Logistics is enhancing its physical equipment by connecting it with Meta Brain, an advanced AI system central to its warehousing, transportation, and delivery operations. Meta Brain 3.0 demonstrates remarkable efficiency, capable of calculating optimal routes for hundreds of millions of parcels in mere seconds, a significant improvement from the minutes it previously required. This AI system also powers the LangzuTech Packer robotic arm, which combines Meta Brain's intelligence with multimodal sensor data to precisely track, grasp, and place parcels of varying shapes. According to a first-quarter regulatory filing, the Packer leverages parallel reinforcement learning in simulated environments to optimize parcel-placement sequences and loading layouts, thereby improving sorting efficiency and maximizing carrier space utilization. During the second quarter, JD upgraded the robotic arm’s force-control technology, enabling more precise cage-loading operations. By June, the Packer was deployed and operating around the clock at multiple JD Logistics parks.

To support its ambitious AI development, JD is significantly boosting its computing capacity. JD Cloud is collaborating with Chinese chipmaker Moore Threads to establish a cluster containing 100,000 GPUs, intended for large-model training, inference, and embodied-AI workloads. This scales up from their previous collaboration on a 10,000-GPU cluster. Furthermore, JD Cloud plans to collect over 10 million hours of video depicting real-world human activities within the next two years, specifically for embodied-AI training.

Beyond warehouse automation, JD Logistics has expanded its autonomous vehicle network to include night-time deliveries, with routes launched in Shenzhen enabling 24/7 operations. The company is also leveraging drones for rural logistics; in June, JD Logistics initiated a drone delivery network in Zizhong, Sichuan province, serving 78 administrative villages and achieving delivery times as short as seven minutes to some mountain communities.

While JD.com did not disclose the total expected cost of the five-year procurement program or specific network-wide return-on-investment targets, JD Logistics' financial reports indicate substantial investment in technology. Research and development spending for the first half of 2026 increased by 23.7% year-on-year to RMB 2.3 billion. Depreciation of property and equipment and amortisation of intangible assets rose by 18.7% to RMB 2.6 billion, primarily due to additional logistics equipment and vehicles. Purchases of property and equipment and investment properties totaled RMB 3.09 billion, reflecting broader investments across the logistics business.

JD’s automation plans align with a broader trend in China's e-commerce sector, where major platforms like Alibaba and Meituan are increasingly investing in fulfilment infrastructure over delivery subsidies. This includes opening