Liu Qiangdong Unveils a New AI Move

Liu Qiangdong is making a fresh move in AI.

Reporters from 科創板日報 have learned that JD.com has established a new “Chameleon Business Unit,” which will take full responsibility for the R&D, product building, and commercialization of the company’s core AI offerings—covering the JoyAI app, the JoyInside embodied-intelligence brand, and JD’s digital human (virtual avatar) solutions.

According to 科創板日報, JD’s Exploratory Research Institute previously housed a “Chameleon” project. Industry sources say the team’s central focus has been the integration of AI software and hardware. Regarding the new unit’s positioning and organizational level within JD, reporters reached out to the company for comment, but had not received a response as of publication.

Looking back to the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), JD officially introduced its large-model brand JoyAI, unveiled the JoyInside embodied-intelligence brand, and released an AI application landscape map—forming a dual-core technical framework of “large models + embodied intelligence.” JD disclosed that the JoyAI family spans models from 3B to 750B parameters, designed to match different scenarios for response speed and performance. It also supports multimodal capabilities across text, speech, images, video, and digital humans.

JD says JoyAI has improved industrial adaptability through key technologies such as dynamic hierarchical distillation and cross-domain data governance. The company claims average inference efficiency has increased by 30%, while training costs have been reduced by 70%, significantly strengthening deployment in real business environments.

On the embodied-intelligence front, JoyInside has already completed technical integration with more than 40 leading robotics and AI toy brands, including Zhongqing Robotics, Yunshen (Deep Robotics), SenseTime’s Yuanluobo, and Huohuotu. These partnerships span humanoid robots, quadruped robots, children’s toys, and AI designer toys—aiming to embed a high-EQ interactive “brain” into smart devices. JD reports that average dialogue turns on integrated hardware have increased by over 120%.

Digital humans have also become a flagship commercialization scenario for JD’s AI strategy. JD’s official data shows that by December 2025, more than 45,000 brands had connected to its digital human services. The cost of digital-human livestreaming is said to be just one-tenth that of human-host livestreaming, while average conversion rates rose by about 30%. During the 2025 “Double 11” shopping festival, the number of merchants using digital-human livestreaming reportedly grew nearly sixfold year over year, driving annual GMV in the “hundreds of billions” of yuan range.

Notably, JD’s “high-end customized digital humans” have moved into premium-brand livestream rooms. In sessions for brands such as MCM and COACH, these digital hosts supported professional features like two-person interaction and detailed product showcasing. JD claims user viewing time increased by as much as threefold, and conversion performance surpassed that of 80% of human livestream hosts.

JD’s consumer-facing AI push is accelerating as well. At the end of 2025, JD launched a self-developed AI plush toy, and the first batch sold out quickly—triggering multiple restocks. A new second batch is now in preparation, and this release will expand to AI toys designed for all age groups, with a full rollout expected in mid-January.

Li Chengdong, founder of Haitun Society, told 科創板日報 that the creation of the Chameleon Business Unit signals two key transformations in JD’s AI strategy.

First, at the organizational level, it consolidates resources by coordinating AI lines that were previously scattered—creating a stronger group-wide force. Second, at the business level, it aims to build a complete commercialization loop by leveraging JD’s e-commerce scenarios and sales capabilities, pushing AI from R&D into real-world deployment.

In Li’s view, JD’s strongest moat lies in its deep supply-chain capabilities and upstream bargaining power. As a leading sales channel in consumer electronics, 3C products, and home appliances, JD is well-positioned to turn AI innovation into scalable products and services.

At the same time, he noted clear weaknesses in JD’s AI development. On one side, long-term investment in large models has been relatively insufficient, leaving a visible gap compared with Alibaba and ByteDance. On the other, JD’s AI systems are still primarily oriented toward domestic operations, with limited overseas expansion—reducing its influence in the global market.