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The story
Founded by Liu Qiangdong in 2004.1
Early years
The company was founded in 1998 as Jingdong, which was named after Liu Qiangdong's then girlfriend Gong Xiaojing and himself.
In 2004, the company's B2C site went online as jdlaser.com. The company began using the domain name 360buy.com, and the name was changed to Jingdong Mall in 2007.
In 2007, JD.com established an in-house logistics department in order to provide more reliable and timely delivery service to consumers.
Since 2009, JD.com has set up a customer service center in Suqian, cumulatively investing over 30 billion RMB to build its self-operated customer service center. As a result, the company now operates the industry's largest customer service team.
On 10 December 2010, JD's founder Liu Qiangdong announced through his Weibo account that every book sold on JD.com would be priced at 20 percent cheaper than its competitors. On December 14, 2010, Dangdang also began to offer discounts to customers and stated that the company would invest 40 million Chinese yuan to give discounts to customers. As a result, JD.com launched the second promotion to sell books at a lower price than Dangdang and announced that it would give coupons instead of reducing prices to protect the benefits of publishers. In November 2011, JD.com provided its customers with a 10 percent discount on books, while Dangdang sent promotional messages to its users. The sudden increase of orders not only caused network errors but also postponed transits of books.
JD.com started the e-book selling business online on 20 February 2012, and provided customers with more than 80,000 electronic books. On 17 April 2013, most of the e-books on Dangdang's website were free for users to download. Consequently, Dangdang launched its flagship store on JD.com in 2023.
In 2013, the company's domain name was changed to JD.com.
Listing
In 2014, JD.com's Nasdaq IPO raised $1.8 billion USD, valuing the company at approximately $26 billion and making it the largest Chinese company to be listed only in the United States.
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In 2015, JD.com launched its Russian site aimed to expand its business globally.
In November 2017, JD.com achieved a sales record of US$19.1 billion. In February 2018, it released its spin-off JD Finance, raising $2.1 billion in a capital raise.
In April 2020, the company confidentially filed for a second listing in Hong Kong and began trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for HK$239 in June 2020.
In 2020, JD.com announced that would be investing $830 million in its JD Health unit, provided by private equity firm Hillhouse Capital. In December 2020, JD Health's $3.5 billion IPO was Hong Kong's largest initial public offering of the year.
In 2021, JD Logistics, the supply chain management and logistics delivery arm of JD.com, raised HK$24.6 billion ($3.2 billion USD) for its initial public offering, which was the second-largest IPO in 2021. Shares rose by 18% on its first day of trading.
Recent years
In May 2023, Sandy Ran Xu, who had served as JD.com’s chief financial officer since 2020, became the company’s chief executive officer and an executive director, succeeding Lei Xu. She was the third CEO in JD.com’s history and the first woman to hold the position.
In October 2023, JD.com began a 4-hour delivery service in Hong Kong.
In September 2024, JD.com launched its global sales business in the United States, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.
In July 2025, JD.com agreed to acquire German electronics retailer Ceconomy, parent of MediaMarkt and Saturn, for US$2.5 billion (€2.2 billion). By November 2025, JD.com had successfully secured a majority stake of over 70% in the company.
On September 13, 2025, JD.com was in advanced talks to acquire British catalogue retailer Argos from Sainsbury's, but discussions ended a day later with Sainsbury's keeping Argos after JD.com communicated it would only engage on materially revised terms.
In early 2026, JD.com's aggressive European retail expansion faced mixed regulatory responses. While the German government allowed the Ceconomy takeover to proceed without intervention, France formally blocked JD.com's attempted acquisition of the French electronics chain Fnac Darty in January 2026 to prevent it from becoming a direct sales channel for Chinese goods. Furthermore, in March 2026, the Ceconomy acquisition encountered serious regulatory resistance in Austria under national investment control laws, prompting JD.com to resubmit its application with enhanced legal commitments regarding data protection and the preservation of local jobs.
From Wikipedia’s article on JD.com, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8