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Zhaogang and Tencent WorkBuddy unveil NextB2B, China's first B2B trade AI agent
Zhaogang Group has teamed up with Tencent WorkBuddy to launch NextB2B, billed as China's first AI agent for the B2B trading industry. The release pairs an industrial trading platform with an enterprise agent product, signaling that AI agents are moving into core transaction workflows.
Zhaogang Group has teamed up with Tencent WorkBuddy to launch NextB2B, billed as China's first AI agent for the B2B trading industry, according to a mydrivers report on September 3.
The two partners bring different assets to the table: Zhaogang is one of China's leading steel industry internet platforms, with years of experience moving commodity trading online, while WorkBuddy is Tencent's agent product for enterprise scenarios. The release is effectively an industrial platform plugging into a general-purpose agent foundation.
Public information about NextB2B's functionality is still limited. The core of the announcement is positioning: the product targets concrete, executable actions in B2B trade rather than general Q&A or office assistance, setting it apart from most agents aimed at white-collar workflows.
B2B trade is a difficult arena for AI: transaction chains are long, ticket values are high, and deals rely on trust and offline fulfillment. Agents have established a foothold mainly in customer service, marketing, and office tasks; moving toward the transaction stage itself is an experiment much closer to the core of the business.
For Tencent, WorkBuddy needs flagship deployments proving that enterprise agents do more than chat and process documents; the Zhaogang partnership supplies industrial depth. For Zhaogang, embedding an agent into its trading scenario could push the platform from information matching toward intelligent matching.
What to watch next: which stages of the trade chain NextB2B actually covers, whether it connects to real deal-making and settlement processes, and whether the playbook can spread from steel trading to other B2B categories. If the first product works, more industrial platforms are likely to follow the same partnership model.
Why it matters
The launch of China's first B2B trade AI agent pushes agent competition beyond office and customer-service use cases into core transaction workflows, a template likely to be replicated across industrial platforms.
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