The smoke of the 2026 US-Canada-Mexico World Cup has not yet begun, but Chinese foreign trade players on the other side of the ocean have begun to grab spots.
Recently, at Chengdu Fengzhouhong International Trading Co., Ltd., CEO Zuo Teng “fed” the consumption data of previous World Cups, Google Trends hot words, and competitive product data to the AI model. The AI not only predicted conventional hot-selling products, but also gave “micro-innovation” directions.
“Product selection is the life and death line of cross-border e-commerce. In the past, product selection relied on experience, but now it relies on big data.” Zuo Teng said that the company has established an AI product selection model with more than 20 dimensions, covering market competition, profit margins, logistics friendliness, negative review rate, etc. The AI combines all the data and outputs product selection scores. This greatly improves the efficiency of product selection. Compared with the past three to five days of manual analysis of one product, AI can now complete the analysis of four products in one day.
Zuo Teng’s practice reveals the current development trend of cross-border e-commerce: when AI penetrates into business capillaries, the underlying logic of the industry is being reshaped.
According to preliminary statistics from the customs, China’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports in 2025 will be 2.75 trillion yuan, an increase of 69.7% over 2020.
In the context of high growth, the value of AI has become increasingly prominent.
From intelligent product selection to insight into user behavior, AI has become an indispensable “business partner” for cross-border e-commerce sellers.
Wang Peibing, director of the Cross-border E-commerce Technology Professional Committee of the Sichuan International Chamber of Commerce, observed that the integration of cross-border e-commerce and AI has extended from basic tool applications to in-depth business empowerment: AI has been able to conduct preliminary analysis of the industry environment and corporate ecology of the target market, providing decision-making reference for companies to go overseas; in the marketing scenarios of social platforms such as TikTok, AI has become an efficiency-improving assistant for the production of videos, pictures and other content, achieving efficient batch creation.
“In the future, the application proportion of AI in marketing strategy formulation, market data mining and other aspects will continue to expand, becoming the core support for cross-border e-commerce companies to respond to market changes and achieve refined operations.” Wang Peibing judged.
With the increasing penetration of AI technology in the field of cross-border e-commerce, a number of AI tools have emerged on the market specifically to serve sellers. Among them, the “Seller Wizard” developed by Chengdu Yunya Information Technology Co., Ltd. is quite representative.
This tool focuses on the Amazon platform and provides sellers with product selection and operation solutions based on big data. It has now served more than 1.7 million sellers at home and abroad.
“AI has significantly lowered the learning and operation threshold for new sellers, which is one of the most direct values that AI brings to the industry.” Zhang Xinyi, head of the marketing department of Chengdu Yunya Information Technology Co., Ltd., said that in the past, the cost and threshold for new sellers to get started and learn to use related software were high. They needed e-commerce operation experience to understand the logic behind the data; AI can automatically analyze data and provide basic judgments to clarify whether product categories are worth entering and what risks and opportunities exist, so that even sellers with no basic knowledge can obtain intuitive conclusions.
This value has been confirmed in the practice of going overseas, and some young people have quickly broken through with technological dividends.
Recently, the finals of a cross-border e-commerce entrepreneurship competition with the theme of “AI + Good Products” started in Chengdu. Many practitioners from all over China shared their entrepreneurial stories using AI.
Among them, the experience of He Jiakun, a “post-2000” entrepreneur in Henan, is particularly typical: When he was in college, he discovered business opportunities with high price differences in foreign strength training equipment, but was once hindered by his lack of foreign trade experience. Until he used AI tools to solve problems such as promotion, back adjustment, and customer service, he finally achieved “overtaking on a curve.”
However, technological dividends are not without costs. The “AI illusion” caused by incomplete data in large models is one of the hidden worries.
Wang Peibing believes that data limitations will be reduced with the development of technology, but it is difficult to completely eliminate it. The most effective way is to supplement large model data with rich and professional databases to narrow the information gap.
Liu Jun, director of the Business Management Department of the School of Economics at Xihua University, pointed out that companies should strengthen the manual review mechanism, and key information such as customer qualifications and contract terms must be verified manually; at the same time, they must pay attention to data security and clarify the storage and use permissions of cross-border data to avoid privacy leaks; in addition, companies also need to strengthen team building and guide employees to understand the operating specifications and applicable boundaries of AI.
