JD.com boss warns robots will replace 700,000 couriers

Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, has warned that robots will replace the company's 700,000 delivery workers "sooner or later," according to the Financial Times, as China's largest retailer accelerates its push into autonomous logistics and embodied intelligence.ft

From Pledge to Warning

The stark prediction marks a shift in tone from Liu, who just weeks earlier had vowed that JD.com would "not fire a single front-line worker replaced by machines" during an internal speech on May 27. At that time, Liu sought to reassure the company's 900,000-strong workforce that JD.com would "do everything possible to safeguard employment for hundreds of thousands of staff, including blue-collar workers".straitstimes+2

To manage the transition, JD.com has launched what it calls "Project Nirvana," a retraining initiative that will send its 700,000 delivery workers to 120 partner schools for technical education. The company has also established more than 80 training bases across China to equip workers with skills such as maintenance and servicing of automated systems. The goal is to transform couriers into technicians capable of supporting the robotic systems that will eventually take over their routes.x+1

A Broader Automation Push

JD.com has been investing aggressively in robotic logistics for years, but the scale of its current ambitions is unprecedented. JD Logistics plans to purchase 3 million robots and 1 million autonomous vehicles as part of its embodied intelligence strategy. The company unveiled its "Wolf Pack" robotics suite at the 2026 World Intelligent Industry Expo in early June, and has mobilized hundreds of thousands of workers and contractors to generate training data for humanoid robots across homes, farms, and elder care facilities.aiweekly+2

Liu's warning lands amid growing anxiety among Chinese policymakers about automation-driven job losses. On June 17, China's State Council unveiled a five-year employment plan aimed at stabilizing jobs in labor-intensive sectors while adapting to advances in artificial intelligence. The plan calls for "innovative human-machine collaborations" and the use of AI to bolster job creation — language that reflects the tension between China's ambition to lead in robotics and the reality of its massive gig-economy workforce.reuters

The Contradiction at China's Core

The challenge for JD.com — and for Beijing — is reconciling rapid automation with social stability. Liu has long predicted this future; as far back as 2018, he told Reuters that "sooner or later, our entire industry will be operated by AI and robots, not humans". The difference now is that the technology has caught up to the rhetoric, and 700,000 workers are waiting to learn what comes next.reuters