Recently, JD.com released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023.

The financial report showed that net revenue in the fourth quarter was 306.1 billion yuan, an increase of 3.6% year-on-year; net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders was 3.4 billion yuan, compared with 3 billion yuan in the same period of 2022;

Net revenue in 2023 was 1084.7 billion yuan, an increase of 3.7% compared with 2022; net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders was 24.2 billion yuan, compared with 10.4 billion yuan in 2022.

Liu Qiangdong, who secured the exclusive cooperation rights for this year's Spring Festival Gala, once again achieved annual revenue of over one trillion yuan. On that evening, JD.com's share price rose more than 11% before the market opened, nearly 20% during the session, and finally closed up 16.18%, with its market capitalization surging by 5.4 billion US dollars (approximately 38.9 billion yuan) overnight.

JD.com, with a market value of tens of billions, announced that it plans to buy 10% of its own shares on the market (calculated based on a circulating market value of approximately US$30 billion), and it will repurchase up to US$3 billion within three years.

Hybrid Cloud + AI

Among the various segments, JD.com's ToB business performed remarkably, with annual service revenue reaching 213.4 billion yuan, an increase of 17.8% year-on-year.

And JD Cloud deserves some credit for this.

JD Cloud has always had its own "strategy," which is a new strategy of cloud intelligence full-value chain industry empowerment combining "AI + cloud computing." JD Cloud will deeply integrate with JD AI to promote the industrial internet.

From the moment it "went to the cloud," JD Cloud has grown in a hybrid multi-cloud environment.

Based on hybrid cloud + AI, JD Cloud released the industry's first hybrid multi-cloud operating system "Cloud Ark" in 2021.

Cloud Ark pushes the management of hybrid multi-cloud to an unprecedented operating system level, which can fully compatible with various infrastructures worldwide, achieving the most comprehensive and thorough management and scheduling of hybrid infrastructure.

Last July, Cloud Ark was upgraded to version 3.0. This version boasts even higher stability and reliability, a richer and more open ecosystem, more advanced computing pooling technology, and broader compatibility with multi-cloud, multi-core, and multi-activity, which can better meet the needs of various industries for digital transformation.

It has also become one of the first in the industry to pass the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's hybrid cloud comprehensive capability evaluation, ranking at the highest level.

JD.com with a touch of "jianghu" (Chinese colloquialism for the world outside of formal institutions or society)

In addition to Cloud Ark 3.0, JD Cloud has also launched the Yanxi large model, which is more suitable for the "constitution" of the industry.

JD Cloud does not emphasize "generality," but instead uses its own data to train its own models, which integrate 70% of general data and 30% of native data from intelligent supply chains, focusing on solving real industry problems.

At the same time, to lower the usage threshold, JD Cloud has launched the Yanxi AI development computing platform based on the underlying capabilities decoupled from the Yanxi large model.

On the Yanxi AI development computing platform, work that previously required a team of more than 10 scientists can now be completed by only 1-2 algorithm personnel, and the entire process from data preparation, model training to model deployment can be completed, with training efficiency improved by 2 times, inference efficiency improved by 6.2 times, and cost savings of nearly 90%.

JD.com, which emphasizes speed, efficiency, quality, and cost savings, has achieved true MaaS.

At the Second Session of the 14th National People's Congress, Cao Peng, Chairman of JD.com's Technology Committee and President of JD Cloud, submitted several proposals this year, including "encouraging domestic computing power hardware and software collaboration to support large model innovation and application" and "using domestic computing power to promote the development of new productive forces."

Cao Peng said that based on years of "trial and error" in multiple industries, JD Cloud has built new productive forces represented by advanced computing systems, which have been widely applied in areas such as the internet, finance, government affairs, energy, and transportation, providing safer, more stable, ultra-high-performance, and cost-effective products and services to customers with different needs across various industries.

JD Cloud, with a touch of "jianghu," is deeply rooted in the industry and is not a "floating cloud."

Final Thoughts

If e-commerce is JD.com's first battlefield, then cloud computing is its second.

In this battle, JD.com does not shrink back.

A few days ago, following Alibaba Cloud announcing its "largest ever" price reduction, JD Cloud directly challenged it, promising to offer prices 10% lower than the lowest actual transaction price of specific cloud vendors, and shouting "feel free to lower prices, compare to the end, and we'll compensate if you buy at a higher price."

JD Cloud has always been a "small transparent" among all JD.com's businesses, existing to better serve other businesses. Later, JD Cloud served as a listing booster and merged with JD Digits, but the latter's listing is still far off, and the former has little presence.

However, JD Cloud has never been absent from every game between cloud vendors. JD.com cannot be separated from the cloud, just like fish cannot be separated from water.

JD Cloud, with a strong touch of "jianghu," is sure to keep up in this "Hua Shan Lun Jian" (a Chinese colloquialism for a showdown).