Sandy Ran Xu

Sandy Ran Xu entered the top echelon of the world’s most powerful women in May when Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com named her its third-ever CEO and the first woman to hold the job. Xu, a 20-year veteran of PwC in the U.S. and China, joined Beijing-based JD.com in 2018 and served as its chief financial officer before becoming CEO. Xu assumed her new job as China exited years of COVID isolation and entered an unexpected period of economic gloom. JD.com, which generated $155 billion in revenue in 2022, beat earnings expectations in the second quarter of 2023, but remains under pressure from declining consumption and competition from e-commerce rivals Pinduoduo and TikTok parent ByteDance. JD.com is also engaged in the race to build China’s preeminent ChatGPT-like AI tool. In June it unveiled ChatRhino, a large language model that it will offer to enterprise clients next year.