JD.com Says It Will Replace 700,000 Couriers With AI Robots

Liu Qiangdong, founder and chairman of JD.com, one of China's largest e-commerce platforms, put it bluntly: the company plans to lay off 700,000 couriers and replace them with AI-powered delivery robots. It is one of the most concrete statements any major tech company has made this year about the scale of physical labor automation to come.

Liu's statement came while discussing the company's strategy for dealing with rising labor costs and competitive pressure from other Chinese commerce platforms. JD.com has invested for years in automated logistics and warehousing, but the pledge to fully replace couriers with robots goes a step further than its previous pilot programs.

What's already running

At Shenzhen airport, robots are already delivering meals to passengers waiting for flights. In parallel, the company is testing supply deliveries to local stores, with robots using existing public transport infrastructure instead of dedicated routes. These are still limited deployments, but they point to the direction the company wants to scale up.

Liu also acknowledged that introducing robots creates problems of its own. The machines require servicing and repairs, meaning that in this case the technology, meant to improve quality of life and boost work efficiency, ends up taking jobs away from people instead of creating them.

Robots will deliver packages. Sooner or later the day will come when couriers are essentially no longer needed - Richard Liu (Liu Qiangdong), founder and chairman of JD.com

The scale of the problem in China

JD.com's announcement comes as China's physical-labor workforce has grown from roughly 200 million people in 2020 to 320 million in 2026, while youth unemployment topped 16 percent in April. Against that backdrop, a plan to lay off hundreds of thousands of couriers is stirring serious social and political concern in China.

China's five-year economic plan simultaneously prioritizes robotics and artificial intelligence as key growth areas, pointing to physical-world applications as the main driver of the sector's expansion. The Ministry of Human Resources has announced worker-protection programs and pointed to new occupations expected to emerge in place of eliminated jobs, such as AI system trainers and drone pilots.

What happens to the couriers

JD.com has not presented a timeline for full robot deployment or a plan to retrain laid-off workers. The company has only signaled the direction of change, pointing to the Shenzhen airport tests and store-delivery pilots. Without a concrete date, the announcement currently functions more as a strategic statement of intent than an operational layoff plan.

For Poland's e-commerce and logistics market, JD.com's announcement signals the direction that global players, against whom local courier firms and commerce platforms compete, may be heading. Last-mile delivery automation has been tested in Europe for years too, but a pledge to replace hundreds of thousands of jobs at once remains the exception rather than the rule.

Analysts note that courier labor costs in China are rising and margin pressure in e-commerce is enormous, making logistics automation a rational business direction regardless of the social controversy it stirs. JD.com currently employs hundreds of thousands of people in logistics, making it one of the largest physical-labor employers in China's services sector.

Sources: Zwolnią 700 tysięcy kurierów. Zastąpią ich roboty napędzane przez AI (bankier.pl), 700 tys. kurierów może stracić pracę. Szef giganta wskazuje, kto ich zastąpi (dlahandlu.pl)