文 | 产联社CLS
AI 正在拆掉跨境贸易的门槛，又把它重新垒高。
温杰前年进入宠物用品外贸，一支不足 5 人的小团队，靠 AI Agent 承接从获客、跟进到报价的全链条工作。商品上架从一小时压缩到几分钟，滞销 Listing 经 Agent 诊断优化后，转化率翻倍。
义乌国际商贸城里，傅江燕的摊位像一个小型 "联合国直播间"：手机支架一支，袜子往桌上一码，"跨国带货部" 开工。一天 80 多条外语带货视频，由 AI"嘴替" 翻成多语种推上海外社媒，袜子卖到 100 多个国家。
AI 进入跨境电商，不是 2026 年才发生的事。早期卖家只在翻译、写标题、简单客服里零散使用；2022 年底生成式 AI 浪潮后，营销素材工具普及，中小卖家成批上手，AI 从 "备选功能" 变成运营标配；2024 到 2025 年，AI 开始介入选品调研、广告投放、库存预测；到 2026 年进入应用深化阶段，智能体连接业务系统，直接执行任务。
平台也在加码。过去抢商家靠补贴、流量和低价，2026 年换成 "谁能让商家用更少的人、干更多的活"。亚马逊、阿里国际站、TikTok Shop、Temu 几乎同时把 AI 工具推到招商和留商最前线，从 "给资源" 转向 "给能力"。行业竞争的逻辑，从 "汗水出海" 转向算力和数据驱动的效率竞争。
入场门槛被拉低的同时，竞争门槛同步抬升，"进入更易、胜出更难" 成为结构性特征。亚马逊全球活跃卖家从 2021 年的 240 万降至 2025 年末的约 165 万，2026 年 5 月进一步跌破 156 万，同比下降 16%；2025 年亚马逊新增卖家仅 16.5 万，较 2024 年减少 44%。当图片、视频与 Listing 都能被高效生成，"工具层" 能力已难构成持久壁垒。卖家生态从增量扩张转向存量博弈，竞争重心转向 AI 难以替代的环节。
上海财经大学数字经济研究院副院长崔丽丽把 AI 比作放大器：产品力强、供应链稳健、组织执行力强的企业被加速放大，只靠铺货与投流的企业更快被淘汰。商家的竞争逻辑，正从工具应用回归产品、供应链与组织的综合比拼。
藏在订单里的AI
AI正在变成跨境电商生意里的基础设施，为商户促成一张张海外订单。
2026年3月下旬，温杰的外贸店铺收到一条询盘。一位加拿大客户准备开一家猫酒店，要采购约20个“猫咪别墅”，订单金额约6800美元。
对温杰来说，这笔单子值得全力争取。她是80后，计算机专业出身，在教培行业做了15年。2024年她中年辞职，9月开通阿里巴巴国际站店铺，卖宠物笼、宠物碗、猫别墅。开店不到两年，每一笔像样的订单都输不起。
初步聊完需求，客户却开始“已读不回”。试过给折扣、发促销，消息发出去像石沉大海。她把前后十几条沟通记录导进AI对话框，敲了一句：“他看了报价就不回了，帮我看看问题出在哪。”
AI没有直接给话术，反问了一句：“客户有没有提过开业时间？”
温杰翻了翻记录。客户在第三条消息里写过，目标是5月初开业。她把这句话补进去，AI才给出那段后来被她称为“反常识”的建议：别谈钱，谈猫。客户此刻最焦虑的不是折扣少几个点，而是5月开业前能不能准时收到货。它顺手拟了一段话：先问猫酒店筹备得怎么样，聊两句猫咪行为学，最后带一句“如果本周确认，能帮你争取一档早鸟折扣”。
温杰半信半疑地发了过去。半小时后，客户回了一长串。一个月后，这笔约6800美元的单子落地。她后来复盘，自己一直在用“卖家思维”逼单，AI教她用“买家思维”帮忙。
尝到甜头后，她把更多工作交给AI。Agent团队从4个“扩招”到16个，做计划的、谈客户的、做执行的、做检查诊断复盘的各司其职。
令她印象深刻的一个场景是，一款竹纤维宠物湿巾投广告，点击量不少，商机转化率却只有3.74%。她把Listing交给Agent诊断，9分钟，Agent逐项拆了标题、卖点、描述和属性，指出“high quality”是废词，“竹纤维”重复出现，核心搜索词“擦脚/擦全身、无酒精”缺失，还建议加一档小MOQ接中小客户试单。团队按建议改完，转化率从3.74%拉到7.95%。过去上品要挑图、翻译、传后台，一个产品耗一个多小时，如今被拆成任务交给不同Agent流转，几分钟走完。一款狗笼的点击率，也从0.17%升至3.92%。
AI Agent把询盘识别、需求澄清、报价跟进、异常诊断与复盘纳入标准化流程，缩短响应时滞、提升跟进密度，流量优势因此更有效地转化为商机与订单。温杰的客户扩展到加拿大、俄罗斯、马来西亚、西班牙等市场，手里积累的供应商资料接近600家，年营收接近500万元。她说，没有AI工具之前，她刚开始连做到100万都“不敢想”。
同样的变化，正在义乌以市场级规模发生。近3万商户常态化使用各类AI工具，仅本地自研AI应用的累计使用量就超过10亿次，深度使用AI的经营户订单增长20%以上。2026年一季度，义乌进出口总值2093.7亿元，创历史同期新高；其中出口1786.1亿元，同比增长21.3%。
傅江燕做了21年袜业生意。过去遇到欧美客户，她最怕开口说英文，谈价磕磕绊绊，只能掏计算器按数字。现在她对着镜头说关键词，3到5分钟生成一条带货视频，一键翻成44种语言同步分发到不同平台，年销2000万双袜子。义乌“金梦佳人”店主楼依洋，用AI设计工具把单条产品视频的制作时间从半小时压到几分钟，两个月做了70多条视频，同期拿下近10万个书包的订单。
义乌小商品城大数据公司总经理周健，把这种变化概括为三个转向：从“经验驱动”转向“数据驱动”，从“单点提效”升级为“全链路赋能”，从“被动接单”转向“主动拓客”。
跨境生意的成本结构、时间节奏和组织形态，正被这些先跑者重新定义。
用AI把跨境生意重做一遍
过去，一桩跨国生意需要庞大的团队负责调研、寻源、采购和物流。一个成熟的跨境电商团队，往往要配齐运营、美工、SEO、客服、广告投放、数据分析等岗位。如今，这套依赖人力扩张的经营模式开始松动。
率先引入AI的是商品内容生产。广州沙滩裤出口商蒋方，已经把产品资料交给ChatGPT，批量生成主图、场景图、卖点图和宣传视频，并尝试把商品信息生成、批量发布交给智能体完成。过去要在多个岗位间流转的制作任务，开始集中到“产品资料输入、AI生成、人工审核”三个环节。
这一变化已进入规模化应用。亚马逊披露，2025年平台独立卖家利用生成式AI创建了超过1200万个可供销售的商品Listing。原本受制于内容制作能力的上架速度，正在脱离团队规模的限制。
AI进一步向经营前端延伸。常驻德国的跨境电商运营者柒野，进入新市场时，会先让AI梳理当地消费需求、文化偏好和细分品类，再借助第三方工具分析竞争格局、价格带及商品表现。传统选品模式下，人工深度分析一款产品通常需要3到5天；接入AI选品模型后，一天可以完成4款产品的多维分析。柒野说，在前端数据搜集与初步筛选环节，AI已能承担约80%的重复性工作，选品能力的内部测试水准已接近人类买手的前20%梯队。运营的工作重心，随之转向判断需求真实性、核算产品利润、评估供应链可行性。
智能体正从内容生成、信息处理进入经营决策，打通原本分散的业务流程。厦门跨境电商从业者陈斌在亚马逊上利用AI关联商品信息、库存、广告活动及销售数据，持续监控补货、定价等环节；广告投放由系统综合判断商品页面状态和库存情况是否适合推广，自动生成投放方案，并持续调整关键词和出价。过去，企业要在运营、广告、库存管理岗位之间传递信息，再由不同人员分别操作；如今，部分数据分析、任务分配和执行流程开始由同一系统承接。AI正从辅助员工完成单项工作，转向承担连续性的经营任务。
交易转化环节也在变化。跨境电商长期面临语言差异、时区错位和信息不对称，海外消费者的咨询、产品参数比较、售前沟通，过去依赖人工客服和标准化系统。AI介入后，多语言咨询、商品推荐和需求识别能够全天候进行。
AI还显著压低了获客成本。翟珂介绍，线下展会上获取一个客户的平均成本大约1000到2000元，投入产出比极低；阿里国际站有效意向客户获客成本仅约300元。
哥伦比亚商学院等机构基于一家大型跨境零售平台开展的随机实验显示，AI完善商品描述使销售额提高约2%；售前聊天机器人使销售额提高16.3%、转化率提高21.7%。实验期间，商品价格、人员和其他投入保持不变。销售增长主要来自商品信息改善、搜索匹配效率提升和售前沟通障碍减少。
组织形态随之改变。跨境电商企业正从“以岗位和流程为中心”转向“以AI能力和关键决策为中心”。阿里国际站商家刘世奇说，AI把选品、上架、客服、基础运营等大量标准化环节自动化，极少的人力即可支撑过去需要数十人完成的业务量。他的团队6个人、10个子账号，从经营视角看AI渗透率已接近100%，人的工作向策略制定、结果审核和商业决策集中。
Morning负责一家出海社交产品品牌方的经营，公司给员工配置了GPT Business账号，她表示开发工作几乎全程会用AI，制作图片和视频时也会用，但原始视频素材仍需人工寻找。据她估计，自己约一半的工作会借助AI，主要是整理数据、形成汇报和获取业务建议，经营决策仍由自己完成。
对传统B2B而言，交易链条更为复杂。上海财经大学数字经济研究院副院长崔丽丽认为，AI在客户开发、信息处理和沟通环节已能实现单点增效，但涉及定制化生产、复杂谈判、长期信任关系和合规审查的环节，仍难以实现端到端自动化。
平台争夺经营入口
2025年之前，跨境电商市场格局以亚马逊为核心，叠加Temu、SHEIN、TikTok Shop、阿里速卖通“出海四小龙”共同构成竞争主体。
到2026年，这一格局演化为更清晰的三层结构：“全品类+全链路”超巨头（亚马逊、阿里系）靠资金、技术和用户惯性守住基本盘；“低价+短链”挑战者（Temu、SHEIN）用极致供应链效率切走日用百货和快时尚；“内容+社交”新势力（TikTok Shop）以更低的流量成本争夺年轻用户。AI生产力工具，已成为各大平台争夺增量商家、沉淀商家经营数据的核心抓手。
阿里国际站走“AI即商品”路线，争夺愿意为效率直接付费的中小外贸企业。核心载体是2026年3月上线海外的企业级AI智能体平台Accio Work，集市场洞察、智能发品、广告诊断、店铺诊断、客户接待于一体。
刘世奇介绍，Accio是年费制，其所在公司每年交4万元。企业版Accio Work Business按团队规模分三档：2999美元覆盖5人，5900美元覆盖15人，29500美元覆盖50人以上。订阅费和token/credits消耗构成新的收入层，底下的会员费和交易抽佣继续存在——AI是叠加在传统B2B收入之上、可单独计价的生产力工具。
亚马逊走“AI即操作层”路线，争夺已经被它锁在履约和广告体系里的第三方卖家。2025年，亚马逊将卖家助手升级为Agentic AI，卖家平台从操作后台进阶为“智能管理中心”。2026年9月，Seller Assistant进一步推出持续运行的工作流，从问答工具升级为经营中枢，跨库存、广告、Listing和合规做推理和自动执行，卖家接受其建议的比例超过90%；Creative Agent和Ads Agent把素材生产和投放执行也收入智能体体系，三者都不向卖家单独收费。
亚马逊用免费的智能体把卖家在平台上的经营动作粘得更紧，再把Seller Assistant的能力通过插件开放给Claude等外部AI工具——卖家用哪家AI前端都行，但插件另一端连接的，仍然是亚马逊的商品目录、库存系统和广告引擎。佣金、履约费和CPC广告这三条管道里的交易，让卖家更难离开。
TikTok走“AI即竞价漏斗前端”路线。先用免费AI把“不会做素材所以不投广告”的中小卖家，变成“能生产素材、于是持续竞价”的广告主；再把素材生成和广告投放合并成同一流程，让卖家省下的制作成本转移到广告消耗里。
2024年，TikTok推出Symphony创意AI套件，Symphony Creative Studio向全球所有广告商开放，商品链接或产品信息可以直接转成视频，数字人口播、多语言翻译与配音同步上线。2025年7月，TikTok Shop的广告路径收窄为一条，用GMV Max取代手动广告，把自然视频、达人帖子、直播和优惠券全部拉进全店GMV优化。
TikTok争夺的是“内容注意力能转化为交易”这条路径上的卖家和广告预算。Symphony Creative Studio免费开放，但生成额度按广告消耗分层，真正的收费点是CPM/CPC竞价和GMV Max的销售额百分比计费。
SHEIN则把AI做成供应链的操作系统本身。LATR（大规模自动化+小单快返）将趋势识别、设计生成、首单分配和补货调度压缩进同一条数据管道，日均AI生成超3000个新品概念，从设计到上架压至5到7天。SHEIN SellerHub和开放API把卖家后台接入这条供应链管道，AI不单独收费，收入落在半托管佣金和RetailMedia站内竞价广告上，2026年第一季度服务收入占比已升至14.3%。
Temu走“AI即供给装配线”路线，争夺供给厚度和整店流量的定价权。2026年6月，Temu将全域ROAS设为唯一投放渠道，AI自动统筹全店SKU的流量分配，商家不再能单独押注爆款。后台内嵌AI图像工具，完成KYC和评级门槛的中国卖家可以直接生成主图和本地化素材；通过与Centric Shoppingfeed的集成，卖家可以在Temu与1000多个全球渠道之间同步商品、库存和订单，一次接入即可维持多平台运营一致性——目的是把更多SKU更快地吸入算法分配池。卖家交的不是“广告费”，而是算法对整店流量持续计价的租金，收费发生在佣金和广告消耗的叠加处。
一位受访者的表述直白：“工具越智能，商家对平台生态的绑定越深，数据持续沉淀在平台侧。谁掌握AI时代的商家数据与交易流程，谁就可能占据主动权。”
被问及如何选择电商平台时，柒野表示，她一直是亚马逊的用户，暂未考虑其他平台。存量的用户，大部分会延续使用原有平台，不会轻易更换。工作台效率真正拉开差距的场景，在增量卖家“从零到一”的生意里。
更容易进场之后，谁能留下来
更低的内容制作成本、更快的商品上架速度，让商家能够同时经营更多产品和市场。亚马逊全球开店2025年12月披露，当年中国卖家新上线选品数量同比增长近25%，销售额超过1000万美元的中国卖家数量增长近30%。翟珂也观察到，平台用户已从传统外贸企业、工厂和贸易商，扩展到内贸转外贸企业、初创企业和个人创业者：“AI帮助商家降低语言、商品上架及部分运营工作的门槛，使缺乏外贸经验的人更容易开始相关业务。”
但“更容易进场”不等于“更容易留下”。进场的商家变多，商品供给持续扩张，能留下来的卖家却在减少。亚马逊存量活跃卖家从2021年的240万降至2025年末约165万，2026年5月进一步跌破156万、同比降16%；增量端，2025年亚马逊新增卖家仅16.5万、同比减44%，创2015年以来最低。同期TikTok Shop美国站店铺从47.5万增至135万、净增近90万。中国卖家层面，2025年7月至2026年7月深圳约8万铺货卖家中约3.28万家注销离场；全国跨境电商相关企业现存超5.1万家，2026年新增注册约1.6万家。
AI降低的是商品生产和营销的技术门槛，却没有同步降低流量、履约、合规和持续经营的门槛。
订单正越来越集中于少数经营者。2026年2月，Marketplace Pulse估算，亚马逊美国站不到8000名卖家贡献了第三方交易总额的一半，约占活跃卖家总数的1.6%；2023年，贡献同等交易份额的卖家还有约1.5万名。以内容驱动交易的TikTok Shop也呈现类似格局：对近10万名美国站卖家的早期追踪发现，排名前1%的卖家贡献了样本累计交易额的60%，排名后50%的卖家贡献不足0.1%。
利润表上的分化同样明显。Marketplace Pulse在2026年对181家电商企业开展的调查显示，仅23%的受访卖家同时实现收入增长和利润率改善，31%的卖家收入增长但利润率持平或下降，38%的卖家经营处于困境。对规模较小的卖家而言，AI节约的人工费用未必转化为更高利润：当更多商家获得相似的内容生产和投放能力，同质化商品仍要在有限流量入口竞争，缺乏产品差异化的商家往往只能继续压价、促销或购买广告。陈斌就说，使用AI后，店铺收入并没有明显增长。
分化在两端同时发生。一端是个人创业者和小型工厂以更低门槛进入市场：2025年1到9月，我国个人跨境电商商品出口累计843.5亿美元，同比增长36.7%；电子商务已成为“一人公司”第一大细分赛道，占比16.49%。借助AI，一人公司能够借助AI减少部分基础岗位投入，部分创业者单人即可管理3到4个店铺。另一端，成熟企业用AI把既有优势进一步放大：华凯易佰2025年通过AI Agent将视觉内容生产效率提升超95%，月均节省物流人力超375小时，选品决策效率提升80%；赛维时代将AI技术融入产品开发、运营与供应链管理。公司2025年年报显示，全年共有12个品牌销售额超过1亿元。
当内容生产和投放能力被AI普及时，真正难以靠订阅一次软件获得的是长期积累的品牌影响力。陆易思观察到，中国企业过去多走商品出口和渠道销售，是“货物出海”，还没有做到“品牌出海”；品牌出海要在海外消费者中形成稳定认知，让他们识别、认可并持续购买，需要用内容营销、品牌定位和GEO建立完整的海外品牌传播体系。
竞争也在向供应链后端转移。一款商品从页面展示到送达海外消费者，要经过采购、生产、质检、跨境运输、清关和末端配送。前端获客速度提高之后，备货失误、产品质量不稳定和履约延误的代价并未减少；商品销售越快，对供应链响应速度和现金流周转的要求反而越高。有自有工厂、稳定供应商和海外仓储网络的企业，可以根据销售变化调整生产及库存；缺乏这些资源的中小卖家，则需要在起订量、交付周期和资金占用之间不断权衡。
合规成本同样正成为出海企业的固定投入。2024年12月13日，欧盟《通用产品安全法规》（GPSR）开始适用，对适用范围内面向欧盟消费者销售的产品，要求明确制造商及欧盟境内责任经济运营者，并在在线商品信息中提供相应身份、联系方式和安全信息；欧盟数字产品护照制度也在按产品类别逐步推进。这意味着，企业应按目标市场和品类建立常态化的合规预算与责任机制，把检测认证、技术文件、供应商追溯和当地责任主体配置，前置到选品与上架环节。
更底层的是组织能力。崔丽丽认为，跨境电商AI落地的最大瓶颈通常不是平台工具，而是业务数据散乱、流程没有标准化、责任与激励不匹配、缺少既懂外贸又懂数据和AI的复合型负责人。AI对企业经营能力的提升存在差异：产品、供应链和组织执行能力较强的企业，更容易把技术效率转化为竞争优势。对成熟企业而言，AI不是“入场券”，而是把供应链深度、品牌资产和资金优势变成更高经营杠杆的乘数。
从一人公司到大型跨国卖家，AI正在成为共同使用的经营工具，却未消除彼此在资源和经营能力上的差距。工具层的差距正在被抹平，竞争随之转向产品、供应链、品牌、履约、合规及客户留存的系统能力。这或许是2026年跨境电商最大的变革：AI让进场变得容易，也让留下变得昂贵。门槛并没有消失，只是从“会不会用工具”，移到了“有没有别人拿不走的硬实力”。
本文由 AI宝库自动抓取并翻译，版权归原作者所有；如需查看原文请点下方链接。
CLS
AI is tearing down the threshold of cross-border trade and re-opening it.
Winjie entered the foreign trade in pets a year ago, with a small team of less than five people, working on the full chain from the recipients to the offers. The top shelf of the commodity was compressed from one hour to a few minutes, and the delay was doubled after Agent's diagnosis.
In Iowa International Trade City, Fu Jiangyan's booth is like a small "UN live room": one cell phone stand, one sock to the table, "Transnational Transportation." One day, more than 80 foreign-language videos were taken, turned from AI 's mouth' to multiple languages, pushed to overseas social media, and socks sold to over 100 countries.
AI's access to a cross-border electrician, not until 2026. The early sellers were used only sporadically in translation, title writing, and simple passenger uniforms; after the wave of AI generated at the end of 2022, the marketing of asset tools became widespread, small and medium-sized sellers in batches, AI moved from "opt-in" to "operating" specifications; AI began to intervene in selection research, advertising, inventory forecasting from 2024 to 2025; and by 2026 it entered the further phase of application, AI agent was connected to the business system and directly performed its tasks.
The platform is also being added. In the past, merchants used to rely on subsidies, traffic and low prices, and in 2026, they were replaced by "who can let them use fewer people and do more work." Amazon, Ali International Station, TikTok Shop, Temu almost simultaneously pushed the AI tool to the front lines of the recruiter and retainer, moving from "resources" to "capacity." The logic of industry competition has moved from "sweet out of the sea" to "calculation and data-driven efficiency competition."
While the entry threshold is lowered, the competitive threshold rises simultaneously, and "entry is easier and more difficult" becomes a structural feature. The global active Amazon sellers fell from 2.4 million in 2021 to about 1.65 million at the end of 2025, falling further by 1.56 million in May 2026, a decline of 16 per cent over the same period, and only 165,000 new Amazon sellers in 2025, a decrease of 44 per cent over 2024. When pictures, videos and listening are produced efficiently, "tool layers" capacity is difficult to create lasting barriers. The seller's ecology has shifted from incremental expansion to stock games, and the focus of competition has shifted to the hard-to-substitute link of AI.
Choi Lee, Vice-President of the Institute of Digital Economy, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, compared AI to amplifiers: enterprises with a strong product, a robust supply chain and a strong organizational performance were rapidly scaled up and eliminated only by the firms that had paved and put in. The competitive logic of business is moving back from the application of tools to the integrated matching of products, supply chains and organizations.
AI hidden in the order.
AI is being transformed into an infrastructure in the cross-border power business, enabling a overseas order for the business.
In late March 2026, a plaque was sent to the Foreign Trade Shop in Winjee. A Canadian customer was about to open a cat hotel and purchase about 20 “cat villas” for an order of approximately $6,800.
For Wenger, this list is worth fighting for. After 80, she was a computer professional and worked in the training industry for 15 years. She resigned in mid-year in 2024 and opened an Alibaba international station shop in September, selling pet cages, pet bowls and cat villas. In less than two years, every decent order could not be lost.
After an initial conversation, the client began to “read back”. We've tried to give discounts, promote sales, send messages like a stone to the sea. And she went back and forth into the AI dialogue box and knocked, "He looked at the offer and never came back, so help me see what the problem is."
"Did the client mention the opening time?"
Wenger flipped the record. The client wrote in his third message that the target was to open in early May. She added this to the suggestion that AI gave what she later called “unusual: not money, not cats. The most anxious of the client at this point is not the small discount, but the timely receipt of the goods before the opening of the business in May. It then drew up a paragraph: first, asking how the Cat Hotel was prepared, two sentences on cat behavior, and lastly, “If confirmed this week, you can get an early bird discount”.
Wenjie sent the past with suspicion. Half an hour later, the client returned a long line. A month later, the list of approximately $6,800 landed. She then went over it and she kept pushing "seller thinking" and AI taught her to help with "buyer thinking".
After tastes sweet, she gives more work to AI. The Agent team ranges from 4 “scaling” to 16, with responsibilities for each department that plans, talks about its clients, carries out its implementation, and performs a diagnostic review.
She was impressed by the fact that the commercial rate of conversion was only 3.74 per cent, as a result of the high number of hits on an ad for a bamboo-fibre pet. She gave Listing to Agent for a nine-minute diagnosis, where Agent removed the headings, selling points, descriptions and attributes, pointing out that “high Quality” was a dead word, that “breather fibre” was repeated, that the core search term “foot rubs/swipes, alcohol-free” was missing, and suggested that a small MOQ be added to the list of small and medium-sized clients. The team completed the recommended conversion rate from 3.74 per cent to 7.95 per cent. In the past, it took more than an hour for a product to pick up, translate, upload, and now it's been detached to different Agents for a few minutes. The rate of hits on a dog cage also rose from 0.17 per cent to 3.92 per cent.
AI Agent integrates in a standardized process the identification of queries, clarification of needs, follow-up of quotations, unusual diagnosis and reloading, reducing response time lags and increasing follow-up density, thus making the flow advantages more effective in translating them into business opportunities and orders. Winjie's clients expanded to markets in Canada, Russia, Malaysia and Spain, and accumulated information on suppliers close to 600, accounting for close to $5 million a year. She said that she had just begun to “never think” about 1 million before she had an AI tool.
The same changes are taking place on a market scale. Nearly 30,000 businesses routinely use a variety of AI tools, and the cumulative use of self-study AI applications alone exceeds 1 billion, and the number of firm orders using AI in depth has increased by more than 20 per cent. In the first quarter of 2026, the total value of imports and exports to and from Yiu was 20,937 billion yuan, a record high for the same period; of that total, 17,861 million yuan was exported, an increase of 21.3 per cent over the same period.
Fu Jiangyan has been doing sock business for 21 years. In the past, she had met with clients from Europe and the United States, who were most afraid to speak English, and had to take out a calculator to count. She now speaks keywords to shot, produces a video with goods in three to five minutes, translates one key into 44 languages for simultaneous distribution to different platforms and sells 20 million pairs of socks each year. The main building of the Iowa “Gimmong Man” shop, which uses an AI design tool to compress the production of single-product videos from half an hour to a few minutes, produced more than 70 videos in two months and ordered nearly 100,000 school bags over the same period.
Zhou Jian, Managing Director of the Big Data Corporation of Iowa Commodity City, summarized this change as three shifts: Moving from “experience-driven” to “data-driven”, from “single-point” to “whole-chain enabling”, from “passive receipt” to “active outreach”.
The cost structure, timing and organization of cross-border business is being redefined by these first runners.
Redo cross-border business with AI.
In the past, a transnational business required a large team to conduct research, sourcing, procurement and logistics. A well-established cross-border powerer team is often equipped with jobs such as operating, crafts, SEOs, passenger uniforms, advertising, data analysis, etc. Today, this business model, which relies on human expansion, is beginning to relax.
The first to introduce AI was commodity content production. Chiang Fan, a Guangzhou sand-pain exporter, has submitted product information to ChatGPT, which produces bulk master maps, scenes, sales points and promotional videos, and attempts to generate commodity information and to deliver publish in bulk to AI agent. In the past, the production tasks that had to be carried out from one job to another began to be concentrated on the “product input, AI generation, manual review”.
This change has entered the scale application. The Amazon disclosed that in 2025 the platform ' s independent sellers had created more than 12 million salesable commodities, Listing, using the generated AI. Originally constrained by the upswing speed of content production capacity, it is moving away from the size of the team.
AI further extends to the front end of the operation. Cross-border electric operators based in Germany, who enter new markets, will first allow AI to combo local consumption needs, cultural preferences and subdivisions and then analyse competition patterns, price bands and commodity performance using third-party tools. Under the traditional selection model, manual in-depth analysis of a product usually takes between three and five days; after access to the AI selection model, a multidimensional analysis of four products can be completed in one day. Kono stated that at the front end of the data collection and initial screening, AI had been able to undertake approximately 80 per cent of the repetitive work and that the internal test level for the selection capacity was close to the top 20 per cent of the ladder for human buyers. The focus of the operation has shifted to assessing the authenticity of demand, accounting for the profitability of products and assessing the viability of the supply chain.
AI agent is moving from content generation, information processing to business decision-making, and through decentralized business processes. In the Amazon, Chen Bin, a cross-border electrician, uses AI-related commodity information, inventory, advertising and sales data to continuously monitor replenishment, pricing, etc. Advertisements are placed in a systematic and comprehensive manner to determine the suitability of the commodity page and inventory for promotion, automatically generate a delivery programme and continuously adjust keywords and bids. In the past, enterprises had to communicate information between their operations, advertising, and inventory management posts, which were operated by different personnel; now, some data analysis, tasking and implementation processes were being carried over by the same system. AI is moving from supporting staff to individual jobs to continuing business assignments.
The transactional chain is also changing. Cross-border electric operators have long faced linguistic differences, time zone misalignment and information asymmetries, consulting overseas consumers, comparison of product parameters, pre-sales communication, and in the past relying on artificial passenger service and standardized systems. Following AI ' s intervention, multilingual counselling, commodity referrals and needs identification can be done around the clock.
AI has also significantly reduced the cost of access. According to the presentation, the average cost of obtaining a customer at a below-line exhibition is about $1,000 to $2,000, and the input output is extremely low; the cost to customers with a valid interest at the Ali International Station is only about $300.
The random experiments carried out by institutions such as the Colombian Business School, based on a large, cross-border retail platform, showed that the AI perfected the description of the commodity led to an increase in sales of about 2 per cent; pre-sale chat robots led to a 16.3 per cent increase in sales and a 21.7 per cent increase in conversion rates. Commodity prices, personnel and other inputs remained unchanged during the experiment. The increase in sales was due mainly to improved commodity information, improved search matching efficiency and reduced pre-sale communication barriers.
The organizational pattern has changed. Cross-border electric operators are moving from “job- and process-centred” to “AI capacity- and key decision-making-centred”. According to Ali International, Liu Shiki, AI automates a large number of standardized links, such as selections, upswings, passenger uniforms, and basic operations, with little manpower to sustain the business that used to require dozens of people. His team of six individuals, 10 sub-accounts, had close to 100 per cent of AI penetration from an operational point of view, and his work focused on strategy, outcome validation and business decision-making.
Morning was in charge of the operation of a offshore social product brand, and the company had assigned a GPT Business account to its staff. She said that the development work would be done almost entirely with AI, as well as with pictures and videos, but the original video asset would still have to be manually searched. She estimated that approximately half of her work would be assisted by AI, mainly in data collation, reporting and obtaining business advice, and that business decisions would still be taken by herself.
The chain of trade is more complex for the traditional B2B. The Vice-President of the Institute of Digital Economy of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Choi Lili, believes that AI has achieved single-point efficiency gains in client development, information processing and communication, but that it is still difficult to automate end-to-end processes involving customized production, complex negotiations, long-term trust relationships and compliance reviews.
The platform fights for access
Prior to 2025, the market pattern of cross-border electric generators was centred on the Amazon, with Temu, SHEIN, TikTok Shop, Ali's fast-selling Four Dragons, forming the competition.
By 2026, this pattern will have evolved into a clearer three-tiered structure: the "Class + Full Chain" super-grandple (Amazon, Ali) with capital, technology and user inertia to hold the basic disk; the "low + Short Chain" challenger (Temu, SHEIN) will be using extremely efficient supply chains to cut daily department goods and fast-fashion; and the " Content + Social" new power (TikTok Shop) will compete for younger users at lower flow costs. The AI Productivity Tool has become a central player in the competition of major platforms for data on the operation of the incremental and sedimentary businesses.
The Ali International Station follows the “AI as a commodity” route and competes for small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises that wish to make paid directly efficient. The core vehicle is Accio Work, a company-level AZAI agent platform, which was launched overseas in March 2026, to provide market insight, smart distribution, advertising diagnostics, shop diagnostics and customer receptions.
According to Liu, Accio is an annual fee and its company pays $40,000 a year. The enterprise version of Accio Work Business is divided into three groups by team size: $2999 covers 5 people, $5,900 covers 15 people and $29,500 covers more than 50 people. Subscriptions and token/credits consumption constitute a new income layer, and membership fees and transactional domestic workers continue to exist below - - AI is a stand-alone productivity tool that is added to traditional B2B income.
The Amazon follows the “AI-Operate Level” route and competes for third-party sellers who have been locked in its performance and advertising system. In 2025, the Amazon upgraded the vendor assistant to Agentic AI and the seller platform from the back of the operation to the Smart Management Centre. In September 2026, Keller Assistant further introduced a running workflow, upgraded from a question-and-answer tool to a business hub, with more than 90 per cent acceptance of the seller ' s recommendations across inventory, advertising, Listing and compliance, and no separate fee from the seller for the AI agent system.
The Amazon uses free AI agent to tighten up the vendor's operations on the platform and to open the capacity of Seller Assistant to external AI tools like Claude through plugins -- - Any one of the front-end AI for the seller, but the other end of the plugin is still the Amazon catalogue, inventory system and advertising engine. The three channels of commission, performance fees and CPC advertising make it more difficult for vendors to leave.
TikTok follows the “AI is the front end of the bid funnel” route. First, using free AI, small and medium-sized sellers who “do not do asset so that they do not advertise” become advertisers who “can produce asset and then compete continuously”; then asset generation and ads are combined into the same process, and the cost of production saved by the seller is transferred to advertising consumption.
In 2024, TikTok launched the Symphony Creative AI package, which is open to all advertisers around the world, with commodity links or product information directly available in video, and digital human on-line, multilingual translation and voiceover on-line. In July 2025, TikTok Shop ' s advertising path narrowed down to one, replacing manual advertising with GMV Max, bringing all natural videos, posters, live broadcasts and coupons to the entire GMV.
TikTok competes for a vendor and advertising budget on the path of “content attention can turn into a trade”. Symphony Creative Studio is open free of charge, but the generation of quota is layered by advertising consumption, with the real point of charge being the percentage billing of the CCM/CPC bid and GMV Max's sales.
SHEIN uses AI as the operating system of the supply chain itself. LATR (large-scale automation + small roll-back) compresses trend identification, design generation, first-sheet distribution and catch-up movements into the same data conduit, generating an average of over 3,000 new product concepts per day, from design to upper shelf, to five to seven days. SHEIN Seller Hub and the Open API connected the vendor backstage to this supply chain pipeline, with AI not charging a separate fee, with revenues falling on semi-hosting commissions and competitive advertising at Retail Media, which rose to 14.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2026.
Temu follows the “AI i.e. supply assembly line” route and competes for pricing rights for supply thickness and whole-shop flow. In June 2026, Temu set up the global ROAS as the only delivery channel, AI automatically integrated the flow distribution of SKU, and businesses could no longer be held in a separate charge. The backstage AI image tool allows Chinese sellers who complete the KYC and rating threshold to directly generate the master map and localize asset; by integrating with Centric Shoppingfeed, sellers can synchronize goods, stocks and orders between Temu and over 1,000 global channels, and one access can maintain multi-platform operational consistency — with the aim of enabling more SKU to inhale algorithmic distribution pools more quickly. The seller did not pay the “advertisement fee”, but rather the rent that the algorithm continued to charge for the whole store, which occurred at the time of commission and advertising consumption.
One interviewee's statement was straightforward: “The more intelligent the tool, the deeper the business is bound to the platform's ecology, and the data continues to sink on the side of the platform. Anyone who has access to the business data and transactional processes of the AI era may take over the initiative.”
Asked how to choose the electrician platform, Nino stated that she had been a user of the Amazon and had not considered other platforms. Most of the users of the stock will continue to use the original platform and will not be easily replaced. The scene of a real gap in the productivity of the workstation is in the “0 to 1” business of a growing vendor.
It's easier to get in. Who can stay?
Lower content production costs and faster upswing of commodities allow businesses to run more products and markets at the same time. In December 2025, the Amazon global opening shop revealed that the number of Chinese sellers with new online selections had increased by nearly 25 per cent over the same period, and the number of Chinese sellers with sales in excess of $10 million had increased by almost 30 per cent. It has also been observed that the platform's users have expanded from traditional foreign trade enterprises, factories and traders to domestic and foreign trade enterprises, start-ups and individual entrepreneurs: “AI helps businesses to lower the threshold for language, commodities and part of their operations, making it easier for those who lack experience in foreign trade to start their business.”
But “favourable access” does not mean “easily staying”. There has been an increase in the number of entrants and a continued expansion in the supply of commodities, while the number of vendors able to stay is decreasing. Active Amazon stock sellers fell from 2.4 million in 2021 to about 1.65 million by the end of 2025, falling further by 1.56 million in May 2026, a 16 per cent decrease in the same year; the incremental end was only 165,000 new Amazon sellers in 2025, a 44 per cent decrease in the same year, the lowest since 2015. The United States station shop at TikTok Shop increased from 475,000 to 1.35 million over the same period, with a net increase of nearly $0.9 million. At the level of Chinese sellers, from July 2025 to July 2026, around 3.28 million sellers left their homes in Shenzhen, and more than 51,000 companies related to cross-border electric operators were registered in China and about 16,000 new ones were registered in 2026.
AI lowers the technical threshold for the production and marketing of commodities without simultaneously lowering the threshold for flows, compliance, compliance and business continuity.
Orders are increasingly concentrated in a few operators. In February 2026, MarketplacePulse estimated that fewer than 8,000 vendors from the Amazon United States station contributed half of the total third-party transactions, or 1.6 per cent of the total active sellers; in 2023, there were still about 15,000 sellers who contributed the same share of transactions. TikTok Shop, a content-driven trade, also shows a similar pattern: the top 1 per cent of the early tracking of nearly 100,000 United States station vendors contributed 60 per cent of the cumulative sample transactions and the second 50 per cent contributed less than 0.1 per cent.
The differentiation on the profit statement is equally evident. A 2026 survey of 181 electric operators conducted by Marketplace Pulse revealed that only 23 per cent of the vendors interviewed had simultaneously achieved income growth and improved profitability, 31 per cent had increased but evenly declined, and 38 per cent were in difficulty. For smaller sellers, AI ' s labour savings do not necessarily translate into higher profits: When more businesses have access to similar content production and delivery capabilities, homogenized goods still compete with rate limit volume entry, and those that lack product differentiation often continue to press, promote or purchase advertising. Chen Bin stated that after the use of AI, there had been no significant increase in store income.
Fragmentation occurs at both ends. At one end are individual entrepreneurs and small-scale factories that enter the market at lower thresholds: From January to September 2025, our individual cross-border electronics exports totalled $8,435 million, an increase of 36.7 per cent over the previous year; e-commerce has become the first largest segment of the “one-man company”, accounting for 16.49 per cent. With AI, one company can reduce part of the base investment with AI, and some entrepreneurs can manage three to four shops on their own. On the other hand, mature firms use AI to further magnify existing advantages: In 2025, Hua Cai Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei Wei According to the company ' s annual report for 2025, 12 brand sales exceeded $100 million throughout the year.
When content production and delivery capabilities are universal in AI, what is really difficult to obtain from a single subscription to software is a long-standing and accumulated brand influence. According to Lewis, Chinese enterprises used to export and sell more goods, “goods out of the sea” and have yet to “brand out”; brands go out of the sea to create a stable perception among overseas consumers that they will recognize, endorse and buy on a continuous basis, requiring a complete system of overseas brand dissemination with content marketing, brand positioning and GEO.
Competition is also shifting to the back end of the supply chain. A commodity is displayed on the page and reaches overseas consumers through procurement, production, quality control, cross-border transport, customs clearance and end-of-pipe distribution. Following an increase in the speed of the front-end take-over, the costs of poor readiness, unstable product quality and delayed performance have not decreased; the faster the sale of commodities, the higher the speed of supply chain response and the demand for cash flow. Enterprises with their own factories, stable suppliers and offshore storage networks can adjust production and inventory in the light of the changes in sales; small and medium-sized sellers lacking these resources need to weigh up from the start-up, delivery cycles and spending.
Compliance costs are also becoming a fixed input for offshore enterprises. On December 13, 2024, the EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) came into force, requiring the identification of manufacturers and responsible economic operators in the EU and the provision of corresponding identification, contact details and security information in online commodity information for products to be sold to EU consumers within the scope of application; the EU digital product passport system is also gradually being developed by product category. This means that the enterprise should establish a regularized compliance budget and accountability mechanism, based on the target market and product class, that allows for testing certification, technical documentation, the traceability of suppliers and the allocation of local subjects of responsibility, leading to selection and promotion.
The bottom line is organizational capacity. According to Choi, the biggest bottleneck for cross-border electrician AI landings is usually not a platform tool, but rather a dissipation of business data, lack of standardization of processes, mismatch of responsibilities and incentives, and a lack of complex owners who understand both foreign trade and data and AI. There is a difference between AI and the upgrading of the entrepreneurial capacity: firms with a high level of product, supply chain and organizational performance can more easily translate technological efficiency into a competitive advantage. For mature enterprises, AI is not a “entry ticket”, but a multiplier that transforms supply chain depth, brand assets and financial advantages into higher leverage.
From a single company to a large transnational vendor, AI is becoming a common business tool without closing the gap in resources and capacity. Disparities at the tool level are being bridged, with competition shifting to product, supply chain, brand, compliance, compliance and customer-retained system capabilities. This is perhaps the biggest change for cross-border electricians in 2026: AI makes entry easy and stay expensive. The threshold did not disappear, but moved from “will the tools be used” to “will there be any hard power that no one else can take away”.
Auto-fetched and translated by AI Gem Box. All rights belong to the original author.