GoKawiilFor the close to half-a-million workers at FedEx , a major AI journey is underway.
The logistics giant is in the midst of a widespread AI literacy initiative that it says will make employees more knowledgeable, efficient and promotion-ready. Launched in early December in partnership with tech consulting firm Accenture , the enterprise-wide education program is also meant to spark innovation from employees at all levels.
FedEx and its competitors in the shipping sector face many business constraints, from tariffs and other policy changes to cost-cutting initiatives that resulted in recent FedEx plant closures and layoffs in places from Kansas to France. Rival UPS recently announced 30,000 layoffs to add to the 48,000 it conducted in 2025. FedEx leadership is keen on adapting to this new world with emerging technology at the forefront, and its recent earnings, including its latest report this week, have met with approval from investors, with shares up close to 50% over the past year.
"The more we invest in our talent being on the leading aspect of that learning journey, the better off they will be, the better off we will be, and the better off the broader industry is going to be," said Vishal Talwar, executive vice president and chief data and information officer at FedEx who also runs the company's data logistics solution Dataworks.
According to the company's most recent annual report, it has 440,000 workers globally.
FedEx continues to introduce new AI capabilities from every end of the organization, like advanced digital tracking and returns capabilities for shippers, announced in early February. The AI learning initiative at FedEx includes personalized, role-based training for employees designed to evolve as the technology does. "This is a living curriculum that will continue to refresh itself every month, every quarter, and we have that in our engagement with Accenture," Talwar said. "It was one of the key attributes that we asked for to make sure we designed for something that remains future-relevant."
The bespoke training operates through Accenture's LearnVantage platform and uses interactive live training sessions, which employees can do during work hours, back-office hours or any other time. Talwar said the company remains flexible as they figure out what works best for its people.
In addition to individual sessions, employees are encouraged to create and take part in what Talwar calls communities of practice. For example, data scientists across the company recently kicked off their own data science community of practice to collectively ideate on use cases. There are also hackathons, common among the industry, where a company puts on an event to collaboratively compete to discover new technological developments and use cases.
Less common is the fact that FedEx began the AI literacy initiative with a full buy-in from the C-suite, with every executive taking two days off to head to Silicon Valley and conduct a speed dating round of sorts, ensuring they partnered with the most compatible company for their efforts. "I have never seen an organization's full C-suite take off for a two-day to just learn," said Talwar, who has been with FedEx since August but previously worked at IBM, Dell and Accenture. "That humility that we have to learn, you can't build it with just launching a program in isolation. So I truly mean it when I say the whole organization is having a joint experience."
While the program is still in its infancy, Talwar is already seeing the effects pan out. Frontline workers are beginning to seek corporate roles to advance their careers at a higher rate, for instance. And even though FedEx is measuring something it calls AIQ (the AI quotient) as more people complete modules, Talwar said they're not over-measuring.
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