FedEx is building out an army of AI agents to work alongside its human workforce, positioning itself to tap the latest wave of technology crashing through corporate America.
The shipping giant, which already deploys artificial intelligence in software development and other areas, is now looking to drive AI agents further into operations, including network planning and business processes. By 2028, FedEx expects to have AI integrated into more than half of its core operational workflows, part of what Chief Digital and Information Officer Vishal Talwar sees as a global shift toward artificial intelligence.
“Every employee and every task in the globe will get adapted to AI and will improve with AI,” said Talwar.
Like FedEx, large companies across America are sorting through the technical back end, guardrails and policies that will form the basis for their fleet of AI agents. Corporate tech chiefs are quickly recognizing the bots as “digital employees” or “AI co-workers” that will work alongside their human staff.
At the same time, the risks of getting the technology wrong are high. Over 40% of businesses’ AI agent projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 because of escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls, according to market research and IT consulting firm Gartner.
Memphis-based FedEx is currently focused on setting up the underlying data and management foundation to oversee its AI bots—a multiyear process that will enable the company to safely scale the tech, according to Talwar. Talwar, who is also president of FedEx Dataworks and reports to Chief Executive Raj Subramaniam, joined FedEx last year to oversee the company’s global digital transformation strategy.
That tech foundation, including information-technology systems and corporate policies, dictates how AI agents should run inside a business. It consists of corporate data and AI models, a way to coordinate AI agents for certain tasks, and a method for keeping the bots “compliant and responsible for every function that they play,” Talwar says.
“Any enterprise that’s not established those foundational capabilities is setting itself up for a risk on the cyber-resilience side, or it’s setting itself up for not leveraging true agentic capabilities,” Talwar said.
Other aspects of FedEx’s AI foundation include updating its business processes and modernizing its technology toolset—both of which are core IT tasks that become even more critical when applying AI agents on top of them, according to Talwar. The company is replacing hundreds of its legacy technology systems with a cloud-first platform.
Though logistics providers are aiming to adopt AI, they’re grappling with challenges like managing numerous, disconnected data sources, said Gartner logistics analyst Jose Reyes. “Logistics can be very fragmented—especially if you think of a global organization with their network being everywhere, it makes it difficult to standardize,” he said.
FedEx’s effort to consolidate its data sources began several years ago, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. This step is the most crucial because data “provides context to humans and to agents,” Talwar said. “If I give you bad information, you will make bad decisions.”
As its underlying tech is completed, FedEx expects to roll out AI and AI agents that connect macro and microeconomic trends to better plan its network. In marketing and campaign management, FedEx will create a hierarchy in which there’s a “manager agent,” an “audit agent” and a “worker agent.” The goal of the hierarchy is to ensure that the agents have a trail of accountability for their actions.
FedEx recorded revenue of $87.9 billion for fiscal year 2025, which ended last May, and its fiscal 2026 guidance put revenue at about $93.5 billion, or $85 billion excluding its freight business. At its February investor day, CEO Subramaniam described digital intelligence as “a true force multiplier” for the company as it plans to scale its digital, AI and automation capabilities.
At the moment, FedEx’s enterprise data platform, called Atlas, supports more than 200 AI use cases across the supply chain, commercial teams and enterprise functions. It has already turned on AI agents in areas such as software development, where they are developing and testing code. In operations, agents are helping customers clear customs more quickly.
Talwar’s plan for FedEx’s AI agents also involves getting its humans ready to interact with the technology. In December, the company launched an AI education program for 300,000 of its employees, as well as a more advanced version for its technology workers. Each employee received a customized training depending on their role, he said.
However, FedEx doesn’t plan for those agents to replace its workers, Talwar said.
Write to Belle Lin at belle.lin@wsj.com