FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam pushes company toward A.I., robotics and re‑globalization

In an interview at FedEx’s large sorting facility in Memphis, Raj Subramaniam described how he is steering the company into an era of A.I., robotics and drones as global trade shifts. The Memphis hub, which handles hundreds of thousands of packages daily, is set to be renamed after FedEx’s founder, Fred Smith.

Subramaniam, who became FedEx’s second chief executive in 2022 after a long career at the company, highlighted the firm’s scale: roughly half a million employees, about 700 planes, some 200,000 trucks and more than 17 million packages handled a day across more than 200 countries and territories.

He noted that the company moves $2 trillion worth of commerce through its system each year and that its operations generate multiple petabytes of data. On technology, Subramaniam said FedEx is using A.I. to better predict deliveries and make supply chains smarter, and that the company is piloting advanced robotics for loading and unloading but that those solutions are "not ready for prime time." He said a multi‑year drone project was ended after the company could not make the technology work or scale from a dollar perspective.

FedEx has said tariffs cost it about $1 billion, even as it told shareholders it expects to increase revenue and gave a rosier profit outlook. Addressing changing trade patterns, Subramaniam coined the term "re-globalization," saying flows between the United States and China are slowing and other routes are growing.

Key Topics

Business, Fedex, Raj Subramaniam, Memphis, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics