The Spring Festival Gala, with its audience of one billion, is evolving from a traffic amplifier in the mobile internet era to a litmus test for AI technology. In 2026, ByteDance appears poised to take center stage as the next major player following Unitree.
On December 23, ByteDance's Volcano Engine was announced as the exclusive AI cloud partner for the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Meanwhile, ByteDance's AI assistant Doubao will introduce various interactive features during the event.
This dual partnership between Volcano Engine and Doubao comes at a time when major tech giants are fiercely competing in AI. For ByteDance, the collaboration serves both as a validation of Volcano Engine's technological capabilities and an opportunity to promote its consumer-facing AI product, Doubao, to a broader audience.
Recently, Volcano Engine reported that Doubao's large model has surpassed 50 trillion daily token usage, marking a tenfold increase year-over-year. Over the past year, Doubao's large model has achieved rapid growth, and Volcano Engine has emerged as the leader in China's public cloud market.
As one of the earliest AI products targeting consumers directly, Doubao has already amassed a significant user base. According to QuestMobile's Q3 2025 AI industry report, Doubao topped the charts with 172 million monthly active users (MAUs), surpassing DeepSeek's 144 million MAUs.
Before Volcano Engine secured its role as the gala's AI cloud partner, AI technology had already made waves during the 2025 Spring Festival Gala. Alibaba Cloud, as the exclusive cloud and AI partner, leveraged AI to create visual effects like "bullet time."
On the consumer front, Alibaba has also ramped up efforts in the latter half of this year, fully entering the AI-to-C market in November. Official data shows that its AI assistant, Qianwen, surpassed 30 million MAUs (including app, web, and PC users) within 23 days of public testing, becoming the fastest-growing AI application globally.
As AI technology matures, the battleground for internet giants has shifted from model development to securing user access. The Spring Festival Gala, as a national-level platform, has naturally become a key arena for competition. ByteDance and Alibaba, widely regarded as frontrunners in China's AI race, view securing the gala partnership as a strategic move.
Looking back at the history of Spring Festival Gala collaborations since 2015, the changing themes reflect the evolution of internet industry trends—from the rise of digital payments to the boom in short videos, and now the proliferation of AI.
In 2015, WeChat partnered with CCTV for its red envelope campaign, generating 11 billion interactions on New Year's Eve and attracting over 200 million users to link their bank cards. Alibaba founder Jack Ma dubbed this move a "Pearl Harbor attack," cementing WeChat's position in mobile payments. In subsequent years, Alipay became the gala's exclusive interactive platform, popularizing its "Five Fortune" campaign. By 2018, Taobao joined the fray, distributing over 1 billion yuan in cash red envelopes.
After payments, Douyin took the stage, heralding the era of short videos. In 2019, as the exclusive social media partner, Douyin launched the "Happy New Year" campaign, amassing 24.7 billion video views. This collaboration propelled Douyin's user growth amid intense industry competition. In 2021, Douyin returned as the "exclusive red envelope partner," giving away 1.2 billion yuan in red envelopes to promote its payment system and consolidate traffic.
Now, in the midst of fierce AI competition, AI is becoming the "star" of Spring Festival Gala sponsorships. With the gala's influence, AI-to-C products like Doubao could follow in the footsteps of WeChat, Alipay, and Douyin, achieving nationwide adoption.
During the 2025 Spring Festival, AI assistants like DeepSeek already demonstrated mass appeal, becoming a major topic of discussion. The 2026 gala may mark a turning point for AI assistant adoption—provided the interactions are simple, engaging, and valuable enough to attract users across all age groups.
The performance of Volcano Engine and Doubao during the gala will serve as a critical indicator of AI technology's maturity. If they can handle gala-level traffic while delivering a seamless user experience, it could significantly accelerate AI adoption.
For now, the spotlight—and the challenges—belong to ByteDance.
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