The idea that trade-offs are inevitable in commerce is deeply ingrained in society, embodied in zero-sum thinking and clichés like “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” If we want great prices, we have to give up convenience. If we want something quickly, we have to pay more. Or, if a service is affordable, convenient, and fast, it must be coming at the expense of the employees, business partners, or the environment.

At Coupang, this kind of thinking runs counter to our very DNA. Amazing service, low prices, broad selection—we want our customers to have it all. At the same time, we want to create the best possible workplace for our employees. We want to help all businesses grow and succeed, no matter how small. And we want the work that we do to help protect our planet, not destroy it. In short, our model of commerce is one in which everyone thrives. How is that possible?

Enter smart innovation. We have invested billions of dollars into building our end-to-end fulfillment and logistics infrastructure, which integrates cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence and custom robotics. And because we own and operate our entire network, including more than 100 global fulfillment centers and a large full-time fulfillment and logistics workforce, we can innovate beyond the boundaries of traditional retail and logistics business models to provide the best customer experience and unlock greater, sustainable value for our people, our communities, and our planet. For example:

Automation Technology

With the help of automation technology, we can deliver orders quickly and reliably to customers while making jobs easier and safer for employees. For example, our automated guided vehicles (AGVs), bring hundreds of items to pickers at their workstations in a single trip. These AGVs eliminate most of the walking and nearly all the burden from lifting and carrying items for employees, reducing their total workload by approximately 65%.

Meanwhile, with our ergonomically designed sorting robots, sorters can simply place packaged products on top of one of these machines, which scans the address on the waybill to sort orders by delivery area in just a few seconds. This means that sorting can also be completed without most of the lifting normally required for the job, making employees’ work dramatically easier while enabling faster delivery for customers. We also have driverless forklifts that automatically store and retrieve pallets containing high-volume products, improving safety by eliminating human-forklift interactions.

By introducing such automation to supplement our existing workforce, we deliver more orders to customers even faster, all while making jobs easier and safer for workers and creating new jobs in line with the increased capacity.

AI-Powered Management System

Underpinning the complex choreography between workers and robots is our AI-powered management system, which coordinates our entire operations from the moment a customer places an order to the moment we deliver that order to their doorstep.

Within seconds of a customer’s order, our AI generates the unique, optimized path each item will follow. The AI also coordinates tasks for our fulfillment center employees and delivery drivers using real-time data, allocating work and providing optimal routes and other information to help them perform their jobs safely and efficiently while managing overall workload. Our system even predicts future demand to forward deploy inventory and equipment such as our AGVs and sorting robots, ensuring a seamless customer experience even in peak times such as holidays.

Such efficiency is possible because we own our network end-to-end, allowing us to analyze, optimize, and innovate every step of the process. We have thousands of patented innovations. In fact, the number of patents issued for Coupang globally has increased nearly tripled in the past three years.

Coupang Named Top 100 Global Innovator for 2025 by LexisNexis 

Integrated Zero-Emission Delivery

We have a growing fleet of Coupang electric vehicles (EVs). In some of our denser delivery areas, EVs comprise 50% of our fleet. We even built an integrated EV logistics center that was designed and built from the ground up with zero-emission delivery in mind. The center includes a ceiling charging system for trucks as well as other customized EV facilities capable of charging electric vehicles 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Our fleet of EVs is not only better for the environment, it’s preferred by our customers and drivers as they are quieter and emission-free. The lack of vibrations also provides a more comfortable ride for our Coupang drivers as they deliver orders to customers.

Eco-Friendly Packaging and Distribution

Thanks to the end-to-end integration of our network, we’ve cut the fulfillment and logistics process in half, eliminating unnecessary travel and hand-offs between intermediary parties. This also allows us to complete more than 85% of our deliveries without additional cardboard box packaging, which is typically required in conventional models to protect the products throughout multiple hand-offs. This has saved the equivalent of 12 million trees.

In addition, we deploy reusable Fresh bags for grocery deliveries, which customers can place outside their doorstep to be recollected by our drivers on their next delivery for cleaning, sterilization, and reuse.  Since its launch, we have deployed our Fresh Bags for 380 million Fresh orders.

To ensure the complete lifecycle of our packaging materials is sustainable, we have a comprehensive recycling program across our global fulfillment centers in which cardboard boxes are responsibly recycled. in 2023, we also made strides in enhancing the efficiency of our packaging methods at our Fulfillment Center in Riverside, CA, leading to a nearly 40% reduction in box usage.

The Future of Commerce for All

This is just a taste of the technology that drives the Coupang experience, combining cutting edge innovations with our talented team to create new moments of wow for our customers. Even so, we are still in the very early stages of our journey. We will continue innovating, breaking trade-offs, and investing in our customers, employees, business partners, and communities working ever closer toward a world where everyone wonders, “How did I ever live without Coupang?”