Alibaba International's Overseas Rush

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Liu Baodan

After two years of fierce competition characterized by low prices, full custody, and semi-custody, the application of AI will lead to a multi-dimensional intense competition in the cross-border e-commerce platform by 2025.

To take the lead in this fierce competition, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group (referred to as "Alibaba International") has already gone all out.

On February 14, Wall Street Insight learned that Alibaba International's B2B cross-border e-commerce platform, Alibaba International Station, is expected to significantly increase its investment in new markets such as Europe throughout 2025.

At the same time, Alibaba International Station will also expand more localized logistics and financial partners in the region, increase more logistics routes towards Europe, provide more reliable logistics guarantees, and add more payment tools and methods that align with the habits of local European buyers.

To attract more merchants, in addition to a series of measures, Alibaba International Station has also released its latest performance report.

It is reported that one week after the Spring Festival, the order volume of Alibaba International Station surged by 50% year-on-year (compared to the lunar calendar year), with all core indicators showing a strong start. Especially while maintaining stable growth in the U.S. market, all emerging markets have achieved record growth rates, with Europe experiencing the fastest growth, with order growth exceeding 70%. The Middle East, South America, and Asia-Pacific markets also followed with rapid growth.

While emerging markets are experiencing strong growth, many sub-sectors are also showing explosive growth.

Data provided by Alibaba International Station shows that in the European market, within the consumer goods sector, the order volume growth rate for beauty products, luggage, consumer electronics, clothing and accessories, jewelry, eyewear, watches, and home and garden products all exceeded 100%. Non-consumer goods sectors such as hardware tools, engineering machinery, and automotive and motorcycle parts also achieved double growth.

In addition to Alibaba International Station, AliExpress, which ranks among the "Four Little Dragons of Going Global," is also ramping up efforts to expand its market presence.

According to Wall Street Insight, during the Spring Festival of 2025, AliExpress launched a "Spring Festival Never Closes" promotional event, with many merchants achieving daily sales exceeding thousands or even tens of thousands of orders, achieving a "good start" for the new year.

In fact, to help cross-border merchants capture traffic during the Spring Festival, AliExpress released a series of favorable measures before the holiday, such as offering a shipping incentive of 1-2 yuan per order for timely shipments during the event.

AliExpress also introduced "Overseas Custody" and "Billion Subsidy" in 2024, encouraging high-ticket, high-quality brand merchants to stock up in local overseas warehouses to improve fulfillment efficiency and ensure price competitiveness through platform subsidies.

Additionally, in the second half of last year, AliExpress clarified its dual-track strategy of "self-operation + custody." Many POP merchants (self-operated merchants) stated that after the dual-track strategy was implemented, the platform returned to merchant operations, granting merchants more autonomy, and they are looking forward to a comprehensive explosion in 2025.

After the first year of full custody in 2023, major cross-border e-commerce platforms have gradually realized that relying solely on "low-price competition" is not a long-term solution. AliExpress has clearly stated that the status of POP will continue to rise, and TEMU is also rumored to be launching a POP model, while the proportion of local stocking models is also increasing Some AliExpress merchants claim that in 2023, China's e-commerce "Four Little Dragons" have risen, and the cross-border industry has undergone tremendous changes. Delivery timeliness and consumer experience have been elevated to extremely important positions, and the era of no inventory and drop shipping, which grew wildly, is gone forever. The cross-border dividend is gradually dissipating, making it difficult for merchants to "earn money while lying down."

An industry consensus is that "spot goods," "warehousing," "product strength," and "refined operations" are gradually becoming the new traffic codes for cross-border trade.

Additionally, industry insiders predict that by 2025, cross-border merchants will face more diversified choices, and merchants need to find profit certainty under different business models based on their main categories and supply chain capabilities.

In recent years, competition in the cross-border e-commerce industry has become increasingly fierce, with major e-commerce platforms seizing opportunities to capture the market. However, the market focus seems to be more on the C-end platforms like SHEIN, Alibaba AliExpress, TEMU, and TikTok Shop, which are the "Four Little Dragons" of Chinese e-commerce going overseas.

As the foundation of Alibaba's global business, the international station, positioned for cross-border B2B, was one of the earliest business segments established by Alibaba in 1999 and is referred to as "Alibaba's eldest son." During the golden period of domestic e-commerce development, Alibaba's international station appeared somewhat dim, but as times change, it has returned to the spotlight in recent years amid the peak of domestic e-commerce industry growth.

At the same time, some industry insiders believe that under the changing global trade situation, B2B overseas platforms, with their large orders, high profits, and more stable and sustainable advantages, will become the most important opportunity for Chinese merchants to go overseas.

To further seek growth, AI has become one of the important strategies for Alibaba's international station today.

According to Wall Street Insights, Alibaba's international station has integrated its full-process AI foreign trade product with the large model DeepSeek-R1, which will be comprehensively applied to various core links of foreign trade business, significantly enhancing reasoning capabilities and better helping merchants expand their business increment.

It is reported that Alibaba's international station has previously launched a full-process AI foreign trade product business assistant, which helps foreign trade merchants achieve product hosting operations, automatic customer reception through four AI Agents, and assists merchants in intelligent marketing in global markets while monitoring compliance risks in real-time.

Cross-border e-commerce expert Lin Zhiyong believes that 2025 will be the first year of AI in cross-border e-commerce because Deepseek has greatly reduced the cost and threshold for using AI. Cross-border e-commerce sellers are actively applying Deepseek to improve work efficiency and quality. AI is rapidly popularizing in the industry, especially as large sellers fully deploy AI, which will create new competitive advantages for small and medium-sized sellers.

Global cross-border e-commerce competition has entered a "protracted war," and a clear trend is that everyone has shifted from growth at all costs to focusing on profitable growth. In this competition, AI is reshaping the supply-demand matching and business models of cross-border e-commerce, becoming a key variable in the competition of cross-border e-commerce platforms in 2025