By 2028, at least US $ 15tn in B2B spend will flow through AI agent exchanges, with Gartner predicting that 90 % of B2B purchasing will be mediated by autonomous digital agents. At the epicenter of this seismic shift is Alibaba. com President Kuo Zhang. Having led Alibaba’ s domestic giants Taobao and Tmall, before taking the helm at Alibaba. com in 2017( following earlier roles at Microsoft and IBM), he is now steering the Chinese e-commerce giant on its increasingly automated, agent-driven future. He is uniquely well placed to talk about the massive wave of AI disruption and the future of agentic commerce across both China and the US.
Multiplying by zero Asked about AI agents moving from merely answering questions to taking action and completing complex business tasks, Kuo says:“ I think this is the biggest change in AI in recent years. Previously, it was more about people prompting the AI model to get answers, but nowadays, more and more people delegate work to
70 October 2026