Federal Express Corporation (FedEx) recently announced a strategic alliance and investment with Nimble, an AI robotics and autonomous e-commerce fulfilment technology company, to scale FedEx Fulfillment with their fully autonomous 3PL model.

To support this alliance, FedEx said it has made a "strategic investment" in Nimble without disclosing the financial details of the transaction.

FedEx said Nimble has more than 130 warehouse and fulfilment operations in North America and 475 million returns processed annually.

"Our strategic alliance and financial investment with Nimble expand our footprint in the e-commerce space, helping to further scale our FedEx Fulfillment offering across North America," said Scott Temple, president of FedEx Supply Chain.

Temple noted that Nimble's "cutting-edge AI robotics and autonomous fulfilment systems will help FedEx streamline operations and unlock new opportunities for our customers."

Simon Kalouche, founder and CEO of Nimble, also welcomed the alliance and FedEx' move to pioneer and scale autonomous fulfilment.

"This collaboration will help enable FedEx to leverage Nimble's fast and cost-effective fulfilment centres, powered by our next-generation intelligent general-purpose warehouse robots and AI technology," he said.

FedEx noted that it is continuing to optimize its physical and digital networks to deliver more for our customers and their consumers with the mission to push smarter and make supply chains smarter.

"FedEx is a leader in supply chain technology and continues to deliver digital solutions to help its customers compete in the dynamic e-commerce space," the logistics giant said.