JD Finance, the financial technology arm of China's e-commerce tycoon JD.com, unveiled the upgrade of its brand on Tuesday with JD Digits, and a move to make inroads into the agricultural and husbandry industry via AI technology.

Speaking about the rationale to focus on this specific area, Cao Peng, vice president and general manager of JD Digits, said that while many sectors in China have great value and opportunities, the pig-breeding industry is one of a few industries that have the willingness to change its status quo. 

China possesses approximately half of the world's supply of pigs. However, the cost is about two times as high as its American counterpart due to lack of efficiency, said Li Defa, professor of Animal Science and Technology College of China Agriculture University.

The "pig face recognition" algorithm developed by JD Digits can correlate the abnormal behaviors of pigs with its growth profile, immune information and real-time physical conditions so that the breeder could be notified in the first place. 

In addition, inspection robots, IoT and other technologies are also applied in areas such as environmental control, disease recognition, waste processing, and ingredients allocation for feed.

According to JD Digits, the solution has been introduced to the pig-breeding industry, where it can decrease costs by more than 30 percent, reducing fodder by up to 10 percent and shortening the slaughter time to around five to eight days. If the entire Chinese pig-breeding industry applies it, the solution could lower costs by up to 50 billion yuan (7.25 billion U.S. dollars). 

This is not the first time that Chinese tech companies bring digital technologies to the pig farming industry. Nine years ago, William Ding, CEO of Chinese gaming company NetEase, opened a pig farm raising non-GMO black hogs under its agricultural brand Weiyang. Earlier this June, Alibaba's cloud unit rolled out its ET Agricultural Brain, providing AI solutions to leading pig farming companies in the country.