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China has criticised an EU investigation into JD.com's €2.2 million acquisition of German retailers MediaMarkt and Saturn, calling the probe "unlawful". Beijing has urged the Chinese e-commerce company not to cooperate with the European Union's examination of the deal. The dispute highlights growing tensions between China and the EU over regulatory oversight of Chinese companies' European investments. The acquisition involves two major German consumer electronics retail chains.

From product discovery to brand storytelling: how AI is reshaping Qixi gifting on JD.com. Qixi Festival, often known as Chinese Valentine's Day, has become one of China's most important occasions for romantic gifting. In the week leading up to Qixi Festival, searches on JD.com for jewellery and luxury footwear more than doubled compared with last year, while searches for luxury watches rose by more than 200%. JD.com has become a major destination for gifting in China, supported by its authenticity guarantee, extensive product selection and fast, reliable delivery. The number of brands working with JD.com on major product launches for this year's Qixi Festival are up by150% on last year. This year, JD.com data points not only to growing demand for jewellery, watches, handbags and prestige beauty, but also to a new development in the gifting journey: AI is helping consumers discover, evaluate and connect with products. Bringing Products to Life Through AI-Powered 3D Shopping While online product content has evolved from text and images to video and livestreaming, most information is still presented on a flat screen. JD.com is exploring how AI and 3D technology can make this experience more immersive. The company's mobile, glasses-free 3D shopping solution combines AI with 3D modelling to make products appear to extend beyond the screen. Initially applied to consumer electronics and home appliances, the technology has now expanded into beauty. Ahead of Qixi Festival, JD.com partnered with premium brands including Estée Lauder and La Mer to introduce the experience for selected products, giving customers a richer way to explore potential gifts before making a purchase. Customers can examine details such as product design, packaging and surface texture directly through the JD.com app, without glasses, a headset or any additional equipment. JD.com data shows that the 3D product technology has increased the number of orders by up to 30% in previous applications. An earlier campaign with SK-II also recorded a 60% increase in click-through rates. AI also makes it easier and quicker for brands to generate 3D model from existing product images, creating a 3D experience in a little as ten minutes, saving time and resources. Extending AI into Luxury Storytelling JD Luxury is also introducing AI-powered creative content into its Qixi campaign for the first time, extending the application of AI from retail operations and shopping experiences into brand storytelling. Using generative AI, JD Luxury created a Qixi campaign film centred on its premium services, authenticity guarantee and fast delivery, under the theme "Luxury Delivered the Next Day". AI supported the creative process from script development to visual design, helping the team combine a technology-led aesthetic with the refined tone expected of luxury storytelling. The applications shows the role of AI in retail is expanding, while consumers are becoming more receptive to AI-powered and immersive shopping experiences. AI is moving closer to the consumer, particularly when it can make product discovery, evaluation and gifting more engaging. For brands, AI is creating new opportunities to combine product launches with richer creative experiences. As gifting habits continue to evolve, technology is becoming an increasingly important part of how gifts are presented, considered and experienced.

JD.com builds China's AI industrialization blueprint: open physical AI stack from EgoLive data to robot bases. Published: August 16, 2026 Want to read in a language you're more familiar with? JD.com founder Richard Liu has said technology barriers are a form of exploitation and opened JD's full-stack self-developed AI to global partners. With H1 R&D spending up 53.2%, JD is building the world's largest embodied data collection center, open-sourcing EgoLive and JoyAI models, and deploying robots across logistics. In 2026, the AI conversation has turned: people no longer care only about parameter records but ask how AI becomes productivity. China did not turn AI into a high-margin closed industry monopolized by a few giants; instead it spreads through industries in a low-cost, replicable way as a basic capability driving industrial upgrading. JD.com is the most representative sample of this path. JD Group founder and chairman Richard Liu recently stated at the 2026 APEC China Business Leaders Forum that the essence of technology barriers is technological exploitation, which is not JD's philosophy, and announced JD's full-chain self-developed AI would open to global partners. H1 R&D investment rose 53.2% year-over-year, accelerating for three quarters, to build a world-class foundation model matrix and push AI from the digital world to the physical world. JD has not made AI a separate high-margin business: some models are open-sourced on Hugging Face and GitHub, digital-human livestreaming is free for more than 80,000 merchants, and the largest human-view dataset is open. With more than twenty years of warehousing, retail, and logistics physical scenarios, JD builds a full-chain self-controlled industrial AI infrastructure. Liu has disclosed plans to collect more than 10 million hours of first- and third-person real-scene video globally to build a world-class embodied dataset. JD is building the world's largest embodied data collection center, with the nation's first embodied data collection community in Suqian, the largest human-view dataset EgoLive open-sourced, and high-precision industry datasets opened to universities and developers. JD also open-sourced the long video generation framework JoyAI-Echo, the real-time video vision-language model JoyAI-VL-Interaction, and the real-time streaming video editing model JoyAI-Video-Edit. The RoboBase project began construction in Guangzhou in Q2, building robot full-lifecycle industrial infrastructure on JD's business ecosystem, with plans for more than 80 bases nationwide in five years. JD Logistics launched the robot ambulance for professional repairs, and established JoyRobocare centers in the UK and Germany. JD's physical AI now covers a closed loop of research, manufacturing, application, and service. On the logistics front, JD's embodied robot fleet covers everything from warehousing to last-mile delivery. The Zhilang goods-to-person system runs in more than 60 warehouses and has gone overseas to the UK and Germany; the dual-arm Yilang robot completes recognition, grasping, and stacking in 10 seconds; more than 1,000 unmanned vehicles cover 20-plus provinces; and Sichuan hosts China's largest drone delivery network, with 7-minute mountain deliveries across 78 villages. In industry services, JD's industrial AI agents serve more than 3,000 manufacturers, compressing data governance from months to hours. The JoyAvatar digital human has served more than 80,000 merchants, Q2 live accounts up 3x year-over-year. JD also launched the Aidol Creation Camp with partners, helping more than 50 AI hardware products launch.