Ant Group tests Alipay AI agent revamp to challenge WeChat

Ant Group Co. is testing a sweeping redesign of its Alipay super app that introduces an AI agent interface, escalating a costly battle with Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s WeChat for dominance over China's mobile ecosystem.

The Hangzhou-based fintech giant will roll out a feature allowing users to type or speak commands to an AI assistant called "Ah Bao" — pronounced "Ah Bao" in Chinese — to book a car ride, order coffee, arrange food delivery or execute wealth management tasks such as purchasing mutual funds with user authorization, according to people familiar with the plans and a video demo reviewed by Bloomberg News.

"We're seeing the super-app model evolve from a menu-driven interface to an intent-driven one, where the AI understands what you want and executes across multiple services," said Wang Peng, a Beijing-based analyst at market research firm Analysys. "This is the natural endpoint of the super-app thesis — one assistant that controls everything."

The revamp pits Ant directly against Tencent, China's most valuable company, which is also testing a prototype AI agent within WeChat's ecosystem. Both platforms count more than 1 billion users each, making them among the most-watched test cases for how AI agents can automate daily digital tasks at scale. ByteDance Ltd.'s Douyin, the dominant short-video platform, is also investing heavily in AI features to keep users within its orbit.

Ant's push into AI agents comes at a steep cost. The company posted a 79% decline in profit in the final three months of 2025 as it ramped up spending on AI ventures in health care and large language model development. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which owns about one-third of Ant, has also been investing billions into AI infrastructure, including data centers and cloud computing capacity.

The new Alipay interface, still in internal testing with no final launch date set, represents a bet that AI can deepen user engagement and transaction volume across Ant's sprawling network of financial and lifestyle services. Alipay processes hundreds of millions of daily transactions spanning payments, insurance, wealth management, and credit scoring — all of which could be routed through the AI agent.

For investors, the implications cut across multiple sectors. Ant's ability to monetize the AI agent — through transaction fees, premium subscriptions, or higher asset management commissions — could help reverse the profit decline that has weighed on its valuation ahead of any potential future IPO. Alibaba, trading at roughly 10 times forward earnings, stands to benefit as a bellwether for China's AI adoption story. Tencent, meanwhile, faces pressure to match the functionality or risk losing engagement share in the payments and lifestyle services arena where Alipay has historically held an edge.

The AI agent race among China's super-apps mirrors a global trend. In the US, companies from OpenAI to Google are racing to build AI agents that can browse the web, book travel, and complete purchases. But China's super-apps have a structural advantage: they already control the full transaction lifecycle, from discovery to payment to post-service support, within a single closed ecosystem.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.