Tmall President Jia Luo: Investments in high-quality brands will be stronger and more comprehensive by 2026

On March 26, at the 2026 TOPTALK Super Brand Private Meeting, Alibaba Tmall CEO Jia Luo announced this year’s operating strategy: continue investing to expand the user base, significantly improve merchant revenue, and help brands build AI-driven operating capabilities. He said, “In 2026, Tmall’s investment in high-quality brands will be even stronger and more comprehensive.”

Over the past year, brands saw high-quality growth on Tmall. The number of brand merchants with annual transaction volume exceeding 100 million yuan increased by 15% year over year; more than 13,000 million-level brands achieved double-digit growth in annual transactions. The 88VIP population of high-net-worth users is close to 60 million. For super new products launched first on Tmall, they contributed 120 billion yuan in transactions for brands; on average, a blockbuster new product generating over 10 million yuan in transactions is born every 5 minutes.

This year, Tmall will continue to increase investment in three areas:

First, increase consumer subsidies so that high-quality products match more users. Specifically, increase investment in 88VIP consumption vouchers to grow the scale of high-net-worth brand users; step up investment in Taobao Gold for brands to expand to new customers; upgrade the algorithms so that good brands and products can reach more consumers, achieving a dual surge in user assets and transactions.

Second, the two major revenue-boosting tools—“Store AI Red Packets” and “Advertisement Intelligent Follow-Bidding”—will be rolled out across the board to increase merchant revenue. The platform will invest 10 billion yuan in store AI red packets to accelerate conversion of brand new customers and potential customers. For high-converting ads that merchants place, the platform will use intelligent follow-bidding and provide subsidies for the products. A 60 billion yuan exclusive traffic launch for super new products ensures that new products can be launched and immediately hit big.

In addition, Tmall will be the first to build for merchants operating capabilities geared toward the AI era. At the end of March, it will launch the e-commerce industry’s first “Lobster version” business operations butler, providing a “Lobster employee” that covers the entire operating lifecycle and is online 24 hours a day, helping brands operate with low cost and high efficiency. In customer service scenarios where AI has already been applied at scale, it will invest in a trillion-token new input to accelerate the upgrade of customer service into AI sales assistants, improving professionalism and inquiry-to-purchase conversion.

“In 2026, Tmall will continue to fully support and uplift high-quality offerings, providing merchants with the most stable operating profits and a platform for brand growth with the longest-lasting continuity.” said Jia Luo, Tmall’s CEO.

(Editor: Jiang Yongdan)

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