Chemo-photothermal treatment has emerged as one of the most efficient cancer therapies due to its synergistic anticancer efficacy and minimal side effects. Most photothermal agents are expensive metals (e.g., Au and Pd) because of their remarkable photothermal effects. However, the high cost severely hinders their large-scale applications in biomedical fields. Herein, we report the synthesis of low-cost CuCo 2 S 4 –Pd composites via a wet-chemical route for enhanced drug delivery and cancer treatment. By decorating ultrasmall Pd nanocrystals onto low-cost and high-surface-area CuCo 2 S 4 , the CuCo 2 S 4 –Pd dumbbell-shaped nanocrystals not only exhibit a high doxorubicin (DOX) loading but also demonstrate significantly increased photothermal effects as compared to CuCo 2 S 4 . More impressively, the precise control of DOX release can be easily achieved by periodic irradiation of near-infrared (NIR) laser and display negligible degradation even after 1000 testing cycles. The drug carrier design strategy herein can be generalized to other drug carriers for stimuli-triggered drug delivery and effective tumor-targeting cancer treatment.