# Alibaba
Latest news and articles about Alibaba
Total: 53 articles found
China’s Viral AI App Crashes as Free ‘Milk Tea’ Giveaway Overwhelms Servers
Qianwen’s app crashed amid overwhelming demand for a widely publicised free milk-tea promotion, prompting the operator to ask users for patience and to confirm voucher validity until Feb 28. The outage exposes tensions between explosive AI-driven marketing and the logistical and regulatory realities of fulfilling mass consumer promotions.
Alibaba’s Qianwen Turns Lunar New Year into a Milk‑Tea Blitz — And Strains Stores, Couriers and Systems
Alibaba’s Qianwen launched a 30 billion yuan promotional blitz offering free orders that generated roughly 10 million orders in nine hours, crashing ordering systems and overwhelming tea shops and couriers. The firm extended voucher expiry dates to ease pressure while markets cheered the traffic; analysts warn the stunt highlights logistic limits and the difficulty of turning subsidy‑driven users into loyal customers.
AI's Bubble‑Tea Blitz: Alibaba's Qianwen Floods Shops with Millions of Low‑Cost Orders
Alibaba’s Qianwen used a RMB 3 billion subsidy campaign to drive an early wave of AI‑powered shopping, triggering more than 10 million orders in nine hours and overwhelming some bubble‑tea shops and couriers. The promotion succeeded at user acquisition but exposed technical glitches, uneven merchant economics and limits in AI recommendations when customers sought novelty.
Meituan’s Defensive Buy: How a 5 Billion‑Yuan Purchase of Dingdong Rewrites China’s Instant‑Retail Map
Meituan’s 5 billion‑yuan acquisition of Dingdong Maicai ends the start‑up’s independent run and reflects a defensive, strategic push in China’s instant‑retail wars. The deal gives Meituan regional market share, warehouses and a curated sourcing capability, but integration risks diluting Dingdong’s locally tuned advantages as the sector consolidates ahead of another likely subsidy‑driven showdown in summer 2026.
China’s Tech Tightening: Kuaishou Hit with Rmb119m Fine as App-Store Blitzes and Supply Squeezes Reshape the Sector
Beijing’s Cyberspace Administration fined Kuaishou Rmb119.1 million for failures in curbing pornographic content, prompting an apology and a pledged overhaul of internal controls. The same day, Alibaba’s Qianwen app topped Apple’s free chart after an enormous milk‑tea giveaway, illustrating the collision between viral user‑acquisition tactics and intensifying regulatory and platform oversight.
WeChat Blocks Alibaba’s Qianwen New‑Year Giveaway — Platform Power Meets Growth Hacking
WeChat quickly blocked sharing links for Alibaba’s Qianwen app after the latter launched a large Spring Festival referral promotion, following a recent similar ban on Yuanbao red‑envelope links. The move underscores how dominant platforms police virality to protect user experience and manage competitive optics, forcing marketers to rethink referral‑based growth.
Alibaba’s Qianwen Rolls Out ¥3bn Lunar New Year Giveaway to Push AI Shopping into the Mass Market
Alibaba’s Qianwen launched a ¥3 billion Lunar New Year promotion that hands every user a 25-yuan no-threshold voucher and rewards referrals with additional coupons, leveraging integrations into Taobao Flash Buy, Fliggy and Amap to promote AI-enabled, one-sentence shopping. The campaign aims to convert holiday-driven trial into habitual, AI-mediated commerce, but presents operational, competitive and regulatory risks.
Meituan’s $717m Bet on Instant Grocery and Alibaba’s Qwen Rebrand Signal a New Phase of Consolidation and Commercialisation in China’s Tech Sector
Meituan has agreed to buy Dingdong Maicai’s China business for roughly $717 million, underscoring consolidation in the instant grocery market now that some players report improving profitability. Alibaba has unified its large-model family under the 千问/Qwen brand to clarify its AI offering and accelerate commercial deployment, reflecting a broader shift from technology race to ecosystem competition.
Meituan’s $717m Bet on Dingdong Maicai: Consolidation of China’s Instant Grocery Wars
Meituan has acquired Dingdong Maicai’s China business for an initial $717 million, absorbing a network of over 1,000 front-line warehouses and more than seven million monthly users. The deal strengthens Meituan’s instant-grocery capabilities and reflects broader consolidation as high fulfilment costs and thin margins push standalone fresh-retail specialists into the arms of platform giants.
Jack Ma Reappears at Alibaba as New AI Shopping App Prepares a RMB3bn Lunar New Year Push
Jack Ma's recent visit to Alibaba's Qianwen team coincides with a planned RMB3 billion Lunar New Year promotional campaign for the AI-enabled shopping app. The effort aims to embed Qianwen in everyday holiday consumption by leveraging Alibaba's ecosystem, but it carries commercial and regulatory risks.
Alibaba Stakes 3 Billion RMB on 'Action' AI to Win the Spring Festival Battleground
Alibaba is investing RMB 3 billion in a Spring Festival campaign that stitches its Qianwen AI into commerce and local services to serve as an action-capable assistant. The move contrasts with Tencent’s cash-driven social push and ByteDance’s entertainment-focused AI experiences, and could determine which platform secures the mainstream AI entry point in China.
China’s Tech Giants Burn Billions in a New Year ‘Red-Envelope’ Bet to Buy AI Habit
China’s leading tech firms have poured 45 billion yuan into Spring Festival promotions that tie cash rewards to usage of AI assistants, aiming to convert holiday curiosity into habitual use. The campaign marks a strategic shift from traffic grabs to direct competition for the status of ‘AI super‑entry,’ but its long‑term success will depend on retention and differentiated product value.