Looking back to 2014, Alipay once dominated the landscape with no rivals in sight. That very Spring Festival, WeChat Pay leveraged its "red envelope" campaign to dramatically increase its payment card bindings from 8 million to 100 million, a move painfully described by Jack Ma as a "sneak attack on Pearl Harbor." Fast forward to the present day, Pony Ma is attempting to replicate that sweet victory, though whether this weapon remains as sharp twelve years later remains an open question. For AI tools, the logic behind user acquisition, retention, and activation differs significantly from that of the mobile internet era.
On December 28, 2025, ByteDance's Volcano Engine announced it would become the exclusive AI cloud partner for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, with its AI product Doubao set to play a major role. Concurrently, Doubao's daily active users surged past 100 million. By contrast, as of November 2025, Tencent's Yuanbao had only reached 37.68 million monthly active users. This led a third-party firm to assert that the domestic competition for the "Chatbot gateway" was essentially decided. Should Doubao leverage the春晚's massive traffic to achieve another explosive growth spurt, it could very well lock in its victory. Tencent could no longer afford to cede initiative in this race.
On January 25, Tencent announced a Spring Festival campaign launching February 1, inviting users to the Yuanbao App to share 10 billion yuan in cash red envelopes, with individual red envelopes potentially reaching 10,000 yuan. China Entrepreneur learned that Yuanbao currently lacks a built-in payment function; users who receive red envelopes must withdraw the funds to their WeChat Change wallets.
On January 26, at Tencent's 2026 annual meeting, Pony Ma emphatically stated that Yuanbao aims to convert saved marketing expenses into red envelopes, hoping to recreate the spectacular success of the WeChat red envelope phenomenon. Simultaneously, Yuanbao underwent functional updates, including an internal test of a group chat feature called "Yuanbao Pai," boldly deploying Tencent's signature "social" product strength. Ma described the social "Yuanbao Pai" project as "originally top-secret."
According to an experience by China Entrepreneur, users can invite QQ or WeChat friends to create or join a "Pai," where they can engage in group chats, completing activities like messaging and reading. Yuanbao Pai also supports photo sharing, file transfers, and has launched a "shared screen" activity. It is reported that future updates will include features like "listen together" and "watch together." While this marks the first time Tencent has integrated these functions into a single product, the features themselves are not groundbreaking.
Can red envelopes truly retain users? The financial muscle of a tech giant can propel a product to a short-term lead, but it is rarely the decisive factor for long-term success. Sun Bo, former Senior Product Manager at Tencent and leader of the WeChat red envelope campaign, told China Entrepreneur that while red envelopes can attract users to Yuanbao, they are unlikely to ensure long-term retention. The key lies in outperforming other AI products by better understanding users, delivering critical experiences, or securing key user information.
Sun Bo reflected on the reasons for the 2014 WeChat red envelope sensation: the strategic goal was payment card binding and user coverage, not transaction volume. The aim was to build a network effect with a critical mass of users and merchants. The Spring Festival Gala, as a super-concentrated traffic pool, allowed for rapid viral spread through social networks, creating one-to-many propagation that engaged the entire nation. Tencent's core advantage has always been its relational chains.
Sun Bo recalled that the initial purpose of WeChat red envelopes wasn't to build a full-fledged payment system overnight, but to encourage users to leave money in their wallets, creating a "sunk cost." Users then had two options: spend the balance directly or bind a card to spend elsewhere. Approximately half of the users opted for card binding, which served as a crucial "bridging action" for future payments. Concepts like sunk cost, network effects, and bridging actions were frequent drivers of mobile internet product explosions, but they may not be directly applicable in the AI era.
From February 2025, Tencent's Yuanbao aggressively invested in user acquisition campaigns, but its growth fluctuated with the advertising spend, failing to establish a sustainable retention loop. According to QuestMobile data, during intensive campaigns in February and March 2025, Yuanbao's MAU surged by 265% and 196% month-over-month, peaking at 41.64 million. However, once the ad budget was reduced, the MAU steadily declined.
Why has Tencent lagged in AI? Judging by the "Yuanbao Pai" product, it appears more as a composite of existing features, insufficient to support Tencent's ambition to overturn the Chatbot battlefield. For users, the value of AI applications lies more in task completion than in time consumption. Yan Junjie, founder of MiniMax, has stated that DAU, a key metric of the mobile internet era, is merely a vanity metric in the AI age and does not contribute to model improvement. Ji Yichao was more direct, stating that AI does not represent a platform shift opportunity, "but rather a technological increment, where the strong are likely to remain strong."
In terms of technological advancement, Tencent currently faces a "catch-up" phase. At the 2026 Tencent annual meeting, both Pony Ma and President Martin Lau were candid about Tencent's slower progress in AI compared to rivals. According to a "Power Plant" report, Lau stated that compared to ByteDance, DeepSeek, and Alibaba, Tencent entered the AI field latest and is in a phase of pursuit.
Reflecting on the reasons for falling behind, Lau admitted that Tencent has historically prioritized product engineering, lacking a holistic approach to AI research. Internally, AI teams were often followed by engineering teams, but the absence of a native AI research unit led to many futile efforts. Lau noted that upon review, they found "insufficient and inadequately streamlined data, unstable pre-trained models, and technical infrastructure incapable of scaling. Furthermore, reinforcement learning lacked key factors, and the base model couldn't support effective reinforcement learning."
The market is still waiting for Tencent to play its ace card: WeChat. However, Pony Ma believes there is no need for undue haste. Tencent must carefully consider the underlying logic and plan WeChat's intelligent ecosystem in a way that balances user needs with privacy and security. "WeChat is Tencent's cornerstone, bearing great expectations. Services like Video Channels and WeChat E-commerce have their own growth logic and trajectories. Integrating new technologies according to our own characteristics requires time and patience; we must plan before acting," Ma commented at the annual meeting.
Tencent has always been cautious about leveraging WeChat's resources. A former employee also mentioned to China Entrepreneur that WeChat has become part of the broader internet ecosystem, and changes cannot be implemented too rapidly. WeChat's principle is that deliberation outweighs execution—understanding things clearly and doing what benefits the ecosystem. "Sometimes, slow is fast. We first need to see what is useful and how not to disturb users. Choosing what to do or not do is actually a form of speed," the former employee said.
How is Doubao countering? Tencent is not the only one treating Doubao's threat with utmost seriousness; Baidu also swiftly took action. On January 26, Baidu announced on the same day as Tencent that from then until March 12, users searching for "Spring Festival red envelopes" in the Baidu App, using Ernie Assistant, or participating in Spring Festival activities would have a chance to share 5 billion yuan in cash red envelopes, with top rewards of 10,000 yuan. On January 27, Baidu's Ernie similarly launched a "multi-person, multi-Agent" group chat feature, allowing users to engage multiple AI roles like "Group Chat Assistant," "Personal Assistant," and vertical-specific agents like "Health Manager" within a single chat.
In fact, Doubao was the first domestic AI product to introduce a group chat feature. In early 2024, Doubao briefly launched an Agent group chat function, allowing users to add multiple different intelligent agents to a group chat. By May, Doubao expanded the internal test and opened 500 slots. However, the feature was taken offline in the latter half of the year. Following Tencent's launch of its AI group chat, inquiries to Doubao's official operations team yielded a response to "stay tuned for updates." An industry insider suggested that ByteDance might not rule out launching its own red envelope campaign during the Spring Festival or coordinating with Douyin.
While expanding its user base advantage in the consumer market, Doubao is also blurring the lines between online and offline, and hardware and software. Recently, many users noticed Doubao introducing virtual try-on previews and continuously adding shopping functionalities. On the hardware front, ByteDance is leveraging smart earphones, mobile devices, AI glasses, and smart home integrations to enable cross-device control, facilitating Doubao's transition from an online tool to an integrated part of offline life.
The battle for consumer gateways is consolidating, with few super App seats remaining for AI applications. Previously, Kuake CEO Wu Jia predicted that in the intelligent era, the key for products is whether they pass the intelligence threshold and perform well on the path to AGI. "From a demand perspective, All in One is indeed a trend; the future likely won't need so many scattered entry points." Recently, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen App underwent a major upgrade based on this logic, focusing on eliminating scattered entry points and systematically integrating core Alibaba ecosystems like Taobao, Alipay, Amap, and Fliggy. It launched over 400 service functions at once, covering consumption, travel, government affairs, and office scenarios, aiming to upgrade AI from a "chat tool" to a "service gateway."
How Yuanbao will integrate more vertical functionalities is a question Tencent must answer. Recently, Tencent's Chief AI Scientist Yao Shunyu stated at a public event that whether for ChatGPT or Doubao, models and products require strong coupling for tight iteration. "Tencent is a company with stronger consumer-facing genes. We are considering how today's large models can provide more value to users," he said.
Comments