DHL and Alibaba teams up to bring AI to SME shipping

Shipping a container across borders still eats up hours most small business owners don't have. DHL Group and Alibaba now want to change that, announcing a memorandum of understanding at Alibaba's CoCreate 2026 conference in Los Angeles to bring AI tools into the freight process.

The two companies will study how AI can support the entire trade journey, not just the shipping leg. That spans supplier discovery and sourcing through to logistics quotes, booking and shipment execution.

Katja Busch, DHL's chief commercial officer, framed the goal around freeing SMEs from paperwork so they can focus on growth instead of compliance.

The initial concrete step will be to integrate Accio, which is Alibaba's no-code agentic artificial intelligence platform that works well for SMEs.

The collaboration between DHL and Alibaba will see Accio integrated into the quotation and booking systems of DHL Global Forwarding, whereby customers can quote freight in real time and even book their cargos within the platform.

Kuo Zhang, Alibaba's president, pointed to AI's role in putting capabilities once reserved for large importers within reach of smaller operators. Pairing Accio with DHL's logistics network, he argued, could strip away some of the friction that keeps SMEs out of international markets in the first place.

According to Tim Robertson, the head of accelerated digitalisation at DHL Global Forwarding, shippers have started expecting smooth sailing for their shipments just like everything else in their business operations.

According to Robertson, the partnership is an opportunity to experiment with whether artificial intelligence will be able to provide better visibility into supply chains.