AI healthcare and innovative drugs are both hot. What is JD Health betting on?

Introduction: A decade is a long cycle. When the frenzy fades and the bubbles settle, the leaders gradually emerge.

This year, the dual trends of innovative drugs and AI healthcare are blowing fiercely.

Capital is surging, and the stock market is chasing. A grand narrative about future healthcare is being continuously written.

According to Goldman Sachs statistics, in the first half of this year, the stock prices of innovative drug companies listed on China's A/H shares have risen by 78% since the beginning of the year. AI healthcare is also extremely hot, with some A-share and Hong Kong stock individual stocks even rising by more than 100%.

Hot money is surging, and stock prices are rising sharply, making the scene reminiscent of the early days of internet healthcare more than a decade ago.

At that time, when healthcare followed the catering and travel industries and was reinvented as a growth myth, a basic common sense was hidden in the dust:

Healthcare is a more serious, long-term, and stable industry. It must balance the advantages of the internet in matching supply and demand with respect for the traditional healthcare system. It must have a strong supply chain capability and the courage to pioneer.

A decade is a long cycle. When the frenzy fades and the bubbles settle, the leaders gradually emerge.

On August 14,$JD HEALTH(06618.HK) released its latest interim report: In the first half of this year, JD Health achieved revenue of 35.29 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.5%; the number of annual active users in the past 12 months exceeded 200 million.

01 Riding the Wind, Steady and Solid

This growth figure may not be surprising compared to a few years ago.

But when placed back in the context of a normalized development cycle, it becomes particularly intriguing.

Looking back at 2019 to 2020, internet healthcare experienced a surge. However, as the heat subsided, the industry gradually cooled down. Even in the slowly stabilizing 2024, the MSCI China Healthcare Index still fell by more than 19%. The outside world generally predicts that the industry will undergo a period of calm and may develop at a more stable pace after adjustment.

But little did they know, this adjustment came faster than expected.

In 2025, whether it is policy layout, consumer market, or technological development, healthcare is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics of the year.

In terms of policy, healthcare and its related industries have been written into the priority list of policies. The "Government Work Report" proposes to implement a priority development strategy to promote the coordinated development and governance of healthcare, medical insurance, and pharmaceuticals. The "Special Action Plan for Promoting Health Consumption" clearly states the need to cultivate and develop new quality productivity in the health consumption field and support the innovation of the "Internet +" healthcare service model.

In terms of consumption, sub-sectors such as weight loss, chronic disease management, and personalized healthcare are becoming active. Especially in the "Year of Weight Management," innovative drugs frequently hit the hot search, and weight loss topics sparked nationwide discussion, becoming a hot topic on social media.

The heat of AI has further fueled the healthcare industry. The "Big Ideas" report released by Cathie Wood predicts that healthcare is the most underestimated AI application. By 2030, AI will reduce drug development costs by four times and increase cancer screening efficiency by 20 times.

Only when the wind is right can the sails be full. JD Health happens to be at the intersection of these favorable trends.

From the capital market perspective, it is a tech stock in innovative drugs and AI healthcare; from the policy and consumer perspective, it is a long-term leader in "Internet +" healthcare; from the perspective of cutting-edge technology layout, it is the first to bet on AI intelligent agents, reserving a first-mover advantage for the future.

With the combination of policy dividends, consumer recovery, and technological empowerment, JD Health is at the core position of the industry's upward cycle, carving out a growth curve that combines stability and imagination.

02 The Source of Growth

In the same booming healthcare field, why did JD Health stand out?

Many users summarize several obvious reasons based on their own experiences: fast drug delivery, comprehensive drug selection, and "one-stop solution for medical, examination, diagnosis, and medication," eliminating the need for extra errands.

But in reality, behind these upgrades in user experience is a huge chain of effects.

To understand JD Health's breakthrough, we need to turn back the clock more than a decade.

At that time, the reason why internet giants were eyeing the healthcare industry was nothing more than believing in the "universal gravitation" effect of the internet in matching supply and demand and releasing network effects, which was reshaping the competitive logic of thousands of industries.

In the industrial era, a company's competitiveness mainly came from economies of scale: the more it produced, the lower the cost, and the more advantageous the company was.

But in the internet era, it follows the network effect: the more users, the higher the value of user experience, and the greater the company's revenue.

Leading companies with a large user base can form an unparalleled moat through a cycle of attracting traffic and expanding scale.

This means that the number of users is the life-and-death situation for internet companies.

As of June 30, 2025, JD Health's annual active user number in the past 12 months exceeded 200 million.

After crossing the 200 million threshold, diminishing marginal returns become an inevitable test.

Being able to maintain a remarkable user growth rate at a large scale, JD Health's key to customer acquisition lies in tackling two hard nuts in the healthcare industry:

The first hard nut is the high standardization of pharmaceutical products, making it difficult to form platform competitive barriers.

The key to breaking the situation lies in deepening the supply chain, cooperating with upstream pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies, and improving platform competitiveness through new drug launches, category coverage, and price advantages.

In the first half of 2025, JD Health further solidified its label as the "first station for new special drugs online."

During the reporting period, more than 30 innovative drugs chose to launch on JD Health, including the world's first injectable version of the weight loss drug Masitropin "Xinermei," China's first original ARNI class antihypertensive drug "Xinchao Tuo," as well as new drugs from pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson and Qingfeng, and medical devices and nutritional supplements like Yuyue Annetang 5th generation dynamic blood glucose meter and By-Health Blue Can Protein Powder.

Under the stable "triangle structure" of self-operated, online platform, and instant retail, JD Health has connected 200,000 pharmacies nationwide, and the coverage of online medical insurance payments has further expanded; the number of merchants settled on the online platform has exceeded 150,000, with more than 50,000 new additions in half a year.

This supply chain advantage attracts more users to gather here, forming a Matthew effect where the strong get stronger. The user scale advantage, in turn, makes JD Health's cooperation with upstream pharmaceutical companies deeper and its cooperation with downstream merchants and pharmacies closer, further strengthening its supply chain capabilities.

The second hard nut is that internet healthcare has always hovered on the periphery of the industry, rarely truly entering core areas such as diagnosis and management.

The key to breaking the situation lies in weaving a "medical, examination, diagnosis, and medication" closed loop, allowing users not only to buy medicine but also to undergo examinations and diagnosis, enjoying full-scenario medical services.

While deeply cultivating the supply chain, JD Health decided early on to layout the full medical scenario, expanding the market, deepening the experience, and increasing users.

In the first half of 2025, JD Health covered high-demand and pain-point health services by deeply cultivating five major specialties of internet hospitals: dermatology, mental health, traditional Chinese medicine, oncology, and andrology, with an average daily consultation volume exceeding 500,000 in the first half of the year.

At the same time, JD Health has also expanded into the rarely ventured areas of home nurse and home rapid testing services in internet healthcare. During the reporting period, JD's home nurse service covered 64 services in 7 categories; JD's home rapid testing expanded to 23 cities nationwide within half a year, providing more than 160 types of rapid testing services.

Through the closed loop of pharmaceuticals, devices, health products, and full-scenario medical services, users' trust in JD Health has become increasingly solid, allowing JD Health to distance itself from others in the same track.

03 The Game is Not Over Yet

After stabilizing the supply chain and service scenarios, the healthcare game is not yet in its final round.

In 2025, AI healthcare is rapidly changing the direction of the entire industry trend. Stanford University's "AI 100-Year Study" lists healthcare as one of the most promising directions for AI applications; AI is expected to significantly improve the health and quality of life of millions of people in the coming years.

In the Chinese market, JD Health is one of the earliest pioneers in AI healthcare.

As early as 2019, JD Health launched the 1.0 version of the AI triage and intelligent prescription review solution, helping users clarify symptoms, match doctors, and improve consultation efficiency. In 2020, AI triage entered the 2.0 stage, integrating JD Health's self-built knowledge base, with triage accuracy improved to about 90%.

From "testing the waters" to "diving deep," JD Health has focused on large models, launching the "Jingyi Qianxun" medical large model in 2023, which is also the industry's first medical large model integrating physical and service, knowledge and data.

With the iteration of multimodal capabilities, "Jingyi Qianxun" has achieved comprehensive coverage in areas such as imaging and lesion recognition, producing a product matrix covering C, B, D, and H ends, including "AI Jingyi," "JD Zhuoyi," and "Kangkang."

However, the speed of technological evolution is always faster than expected. In 2025, with the emergence of DeepSeek, the industry quietly transitioned from the state of "talking about large models" a few months ago to a new stage of "talking about intelligent agents."

In the first half of the year, JD Internet Hospital launched more than 500 expert doctor intelligent agents. These expert doctor intelligent agents not only possess general AI capabilities but also deeply train the "digital twin" of the doctor based on the doctor's professional knowledge, clinical experience, thinking mode, and expression habits, covering multiple key specialties such as dermatology, mental health, and traditional Chinese medicine.

Some doctors have stated that this "digital twin" frees doctors from repetitive consultations, doubling diagnostic efficiency. As of June 30, 2025, the "AI Jingyi" intelligent agent has served more than 50 million users, becoming a truly "mass entry" in China's AI healthcare services.

While providing medical convenience to the public, JD Health has also extended its business from the retail end to the hospital medical service system. Through the "JD Zhuoyi" hospital full-scenario AI product system, it launched "Personal Medical Steward" for users, "Doctor Digital Twin" for doctors, and "Future Digital Hospital" services for overall hospital operation management, helping medical institutions improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance service quality.

This AI healthcare breakthrough still follows the oldest business rule: first land, then talk about imagination. No matter how big the trend, it is only an aid. Only those who can ride the wind and proceed steadily and solidly can write the real industry pattern in the next decade.