Alibaba.com APAC General Manager Shawn Yang speaks during a press conference for the launch of Accio Work in Korea at Lotte Hotel Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of Alibaba.com
E-commerce giant Alibaba.com announced Thursday the launch of Accio Work, a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based business support system designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Korea more easily reach global consumers.
The subsidiary of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group said Accio Work’s agentic AI performs tasks automatically for entrepreneurs, including one-person companies, with a level of efficiency typically available only to large corporations.
“AI is no longer a futuristic technology. It is a core infrastructure changing ways of business operations right now,” said Shawn Yang, general manager for the APAC region at Alibaba.com, at a press conference in Seoul. “Accio Work brings a large-size company’s operational efficiency to SMEs and one-person startups, allowing them to debut the global market.”
The AI agent in Accio Work automatically tackles the entire business process, from market research to product planning, sourcing, price negotiations, product registration, global marketing and store operations. A core feature is that, beyond answering questions, it creates actual tasks based on users’ requests and performs them by itself.
Alibaba.com saw that compared to larger firms, SMEs experience more difficulties in understanding markets and consumers, a shortage of expert workers and excessive workloads of repetitive tasks. Different countries have different languages, policies and taxation systems, posing difficult barriers for SMEs. On top of limited capabilities in terms of manpower and efficiency, those hurdles prevent SMEs from targeting broader markets, according to the company.
Alibaba.com said Accio Work can serve as an unprecedented guide for companies facing these challenges, offering professional support for market expansion, strategy development and task execution around the clock. With the assistance, SMEs can focus more on higher value-added decision-making, such as supplier negotiations and real-time risk management.
“With Accio Work, companies can start business faster and make wiser decisions. It’s going to be a gamechanger for SMEs competing on the global stage,” said James Zhang, head of Alibaba.com’s global seller product & services and APAC buyer growth, in the press conference.
Alibaba.com’s investment in Korean SMEs comes as the country’s digital infrastructure and global competitiveness have reached a global level, and foreign demand for Korean products is increasing. The business-to-business e-commerce platform operator this year saw the number of its Korean partner companies operating on its platform increase 18 percent from the previous year. Global buyers’ inquiries about Korean sellers this year also spiked 128 percent from the previous year.
Building off Korean firms’ rising popularity across the globe, Alibaba.com will host a special round of competition for Korean startups at CoCreate Pitch 2026, a business competition using Accio Work to select the most innovative firms. The Korean round consists of three categories — general SMEs, 0-to-1 startup, student — with prize money of 200 million won ($130,000). The final round for the Korean startups is scheduled to take place Aug. 25. The winner gets to join the global round of CoCreate Pitch 2026 in the United States.
Source: Korea Times News
