The Morning Download: FedEx Plans AI Agent Workforce

Good Morning. FedEx is building out an army of AI agents to work alongside its human workforce. The shipping giant, which already deploys AI in software development and other areas, is looking to drive AI agents further into operations, including network planning and business processes, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Belle Lin reports. Read her full story here.

By 2028, FedEx expects to have AI integrated into more than half of its core operational workflows, according to Chief Digital and Information Officer Vishal Talwar. “Every employee and every task in the globe will get adapted to AI and will improve with AI,” Talwar said. First, leadership must create strong foundations across tech, governance and training. More below.

FedEx’s AI 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.

• The company is also updating business processes and modernizing the technology toolset, replacing hundreds of legacy technology systems with a cloud-first platform.
• 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 tech workers. Each employee received customized training based on their role.
• 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 is to ensure agents have a trail of accountability.

“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.

Are your company’s tech foundations strong enough to support AI? Tell us about what you are building and why.

We want to know what you feel about AI. No, not what you think about AI, but what you really feel about it. Create an emoji that expresses your AI sentiment and send it to us. We’ll publish the best ones in future newsletters.

TikTok’s Chinese parent is getting access to Nvidia chips. ByteDance is building AI computing capacity outside China, partnering with Malaysia-based Aolani Cloud to access some 36,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips worth over $2.5 billion, the WSJ reports. The move helps ByteDance sidestep U.S. export controls that block top Nvidia chips from being sold directly to China. The company, which operates five of the world's 50 most popular AI consumer apps, plans to use the computing power for AI research and development.

Microsoft is pivoting to health to boost Copilot. The company on Thursday rolled out Copilot Health, an AI tool that provides personalized medical advice by connecting to users' health records, lab results, wearables, and doctor notes. The WSJ reports that the software giant is counting on the new health service to drive engagement for Copilot and attract new users to its app, which trails competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Microsoft plans to eventually charge users for the feature.

Meta delays next AI model. Meta's next AI model, codenamed Avocado, has underperformed rivals like Google and Anthropic in internal tests, pushing its release to at least May, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile  executives have talked about temporarily licensing Google's Gemini to power its AI products. 

The company has spent heavily on the effort. After earlier model efforts disappointed, Meta in 2025 invested in Scale AI and appointed its CEO Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer. Wang assembled an internal lab to develop two new models — Avocado, a foundational AI model, and Mango, focused on image and video generation.

Oracle allocates extra $500 million to cover restructuring. Oracle is raising its restructuring budget by $500 million to $2.1 billion this fiscal year, as AI coding tools enable it to shrink software development teams. "AI models for generating computer code have become so efficient that we have been restructuring our product development teams into smaller, more agile and productive groups," the company said Tuesday.

Adobe CEO steps down amid AI disruption concerns. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is stepping down after 18 years, as the company struggles to convince investors it can navigate AI disruption, the Journal reports. The company on Thursday posted higher quarterly sales, but failed to impress Wall Street. 

Musk poaches Cursor leaders. xAI is hiring two senior Cursor leaders to boost its coding capabilities as Elon Musk admits the company's Grok models have fallen behind rivals, the Information reports.

Four crew members were killed when a American KC-135 fuel tanker crashed Thursday in western Iraq, the U.S. military said. The plane had been flying with a crew of six, and rescue efforts were under way. (WSJ)

Oil prices early Friday held around $100, despite U.S. efforts to boost global supplies by allowing countries to purchase sanctioned Russian crude already at sea. (WSJ)

Arab diplomats trying to find a diplomatic path out of the war now being waged by the U.S. and Israel against Iran say Tehran, emboldened by its ability to rattle the global economy by choking oil shipments, has laid out steep preconditions for any return to talks. (WSJ)

The private-credit engine that powered massive growth on Wall Street is sputtering, with investors trying to pull money out of big funds, forcing firms into uncomfortable decisions and endangering their future profits. (WSJ)

The WSJ Tech Council brings together CIOs, CTOs and CISOs advancing innovation and shaping the future. Join this trusted community where tech executives connect with peers to explore emerging trends and gain the perspective they need to stay ahead of disruption.

Request Information

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.