Ant Group's AI Services See Surge During Holiday Season

On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year in the Year of the Horse, Ant Group released operational data from the Spring Festival holiday, revealing a significant breakthrough for its core AI business: Alipay's "AI Pay" surpassed 100 million users, while the standalone Ant Afu app also exceeded 100 million total users. During this first Spring Festival where AI saw widespread application, Ant successfully carved out a distinct position in the holiday's AI competition by excelling in the payments and health sectors.

In the realm of AI-native payments, as AI technology integrates into everyday spending, Alipay's "AI Pay" saw a significant surge over the holiday. Data indicates that after transaction volume exceeded 120 million on February 12th, its user base officially crossed the 100 million threshold. This makes Alipay's "AI Pay" the world's first AI-native payment product to achieve both over 100 million transactions and users, signaling its official entry into large-scale commercialization.

For independent AI health applications, "Ant Afu" rapidly gained nationwide popularity and attention through its "Health Fu" campaign and appearance on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Recent data shows the total user base for the Ant Afu standalone app quickly surpassed 100 million, making it the world's largest health AI application. During the holiday, a trend of younger users teaching their families to use Afu drove continuous download spikes, topping the Apple App Store charts for multiple days. Among new Ant Afu App users during Spring Festival, 52% came from third-tier cities and below.

Behind these developments, Ant's AI strategy clearly demonstrates a differentiated approach. While many internet companies vie for general user access points, Ant avoids this crowded space, focusing instead on high-trust, high-barrier sectors like payments and healthcare. This path is a natural extension of Ant's two-decade business logic: using technology to solve specific, real-world societal issues, building commercial strength while addressing public needs.

These achievements are also supported by Ant Group's advancements in AGI exploration. The company recently open-sourced its Bailing Large Model 2.5, including flagship models like the trillion-parameter reasoning model Ring-2.5-1T. Its embodied AI team, Lingbo Technology, also open-sourced four models for the first time, including LingBot-VLA and LingBot-World. Progress in these foundational models has enabled numerous breakthroughs in applied fields.

In a recent media interview, Ant Group CEO Han Xinyi shared that the company aims to use AI to safeguard user wealth and health, a vision encapsulated in its "Two Flowers" AI strategy: "Spending Money" and "Spending Life."