The race to dominate AI gateways is heating up, with internet giants like Tencent and Alibaba investing billions in red envelope campaigns to cultivate user habits of "asking AI first." Each time a user claims a reward, it plants a seed for future AI interaction, potentially deciding who holds the ticket to the next decade of internet ecosystem dominance.
The rapid advancement of AI technology is transforming the concept of an "AI super gateway" into reality. Major players including Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance are fiercely competing for control over what is seen as the core of internet traffic for the coming ten years. Historical precedents from the PC era, such as Google and Yahoo, and mobile internet era champions like WeChat and Douyin, demonstrate the iron rule that "gateways determine ecosystems, and ecosystems determine monetization." In the AI era, the battlefield has expanded to encompass the entire digital life sphere, with giants employing differentiated strategies to achieve their ultimate goals.
**Divergent Strategic Approaches of the Three Giants** During the early days of mobile internet, Tencent's WeChat leveraged its late-mover advantage to surpass Xiaomi's Miliao and build a vast commercial empire. This success underscored the critical importance of controlling access points. Now, in the AI era, the three major players have developed distinct strategic paths.
The Alibaba ecosystem is deepening its "infrastructure + services" strategy, aiming not just to capture user time but to deeply integrate its commercial ecosystem into the Tongyi Qianwen APP. Tongyi Qianwen has transcended the boundaries of a traditional chatbot; users can conveniently order food, book flights, check social security information, and reserve hotels within the app. Its recent "3 Billion CNY No-Cost Spring Festival" campaign saw AI-generated orders surpass ten million in just nine hours, demonstrating strong user engagement and conversion power. Alibaba's "AI + e-commerce" ecosystem is showing promising early results and vigorous growth. Furthermore, its integrated technological layout of "Tongyi + Alibaba Cloud + T-Head" solidifies its core competitiveness in the underlying computing power layer, granting Alibaba significant influence in this foundational area.
The ByteDance camp adheres to a "traffic + content" logic, leveraging Douyin's global-scale traffic pool. Its AI product, Doubao, has already surpassed 100 million monthly active users. Doubao is not merely a tool but has become a content distribution hub. ByteDance retains users through exceptional interactive experiences and low barriers to entry, then uses the massive data generated to refine its models. Additionally, ByteDance is venturing into hardware, attempting to intercept user intentions at a foundational level by bypassing mobile operating systems. If this "system-level integration" proves successful, it could significantly diminish the value of traditional apps, potentially positioning ByteDance as an ecosystem dominator with a dual "software-hardware" strategy in the AI era.
The Tencent group pursues a strategy of "social penetration and striking second," keenly aware of the high barriers to creating a new standalone super-app. Instead, it focuses on deeply mining the potential of its established super gateway, WeChat. Recently, Tencent invested 1 billion CNY in cash red envelope subsidies, using features like "Yuanbao Giveaway" to trigger viral spread within the WeChat ecosystem. This is essentially an active exploration of deeply embedding AI into social relationship chains. Looking ahead, it remains to be seen whether Tencent will organically integrate AI capabilities into its core products like WeChat, QQ, Meetings, and Docs—a key factor in determining if it can maintain its dominant mobile internet gateway.
Currently, Alibaba's Qianwen, ByteDance's Doubao, and Tencent's Yuanbao have formed a tripartite balance of power. Data from Analysys shows that at the end of January, Doubao led the AI application rankings with over 200 million average monthly active users. Tencent's Yuanbao followed in second place with 91.13 million, and Alibaba's Qianwen ranked third with 86.168 million.
**Investment Perspective: Identifying the "Shadow Stocks"** Industry insiders view this battle as fundamentally a contest for the "intention economy." The future winner may not be the one with the largest model parameters, but rather the player with the most robust ecosystem capable of converting "dialogue" into "service delivery" via the shortest path. Currently, Alibaba appears to have a slight edge in commercial closed-loop capabilities, while ByteDance holds an advantage in user reach.
How can ordinary investors identify opportunities? Amidst this intense competition, focusing on AI e-commerce, vertical applications, and underlying infrastructure may reveal relatively certain "shadows" to follow. Companies with equity relationships to the three giants are particularly worthy of attention.
The Tencent system primarily invests under the name of Linzhi Tencent Technology Co., Ltd. According to Tianyancha's ultimate controller analysis, Ma Huateng is the actual controller of Linzhi Tencent Technology Co., Ltd.
In the A-share market, 11 companies have "Tencent" as a keyword among their top ten circulating shareholders, with Linzhi Tencent being the shareholder for most. In terms of market capitalization, companies like China Unicom and Century Huatong have market caps exceeding 100 billion CNY.
What is the Alibaba system's footprint in the A-share market? Data shows 11 companies have "Alibaba" or "Taobao" as keywords among their top ten circulating shareholders. The ByteDance system holds shares in Zhangyue Technology through Beijing Quantum Leap Technology Co., Ltd. Tianyancha indicates that Beijing Quantum Leap Technology Co., Ltd., established in 2018, is a member of the Douyin Group and operates in technology promotion and application services. The Baidu system holds shares in Yuxin Technology through Baidu (China) Co., Ltd.
**Other Potential Beneficiaries** Which other companies might benefit from the scramble for AI gateways by internet giants like Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance?
A Guosen Securities research report suggests that recent expectations fueled by Clawdbot regarding the "accelerated real-world application of AI agents" have become a market hotspot. Concurrently, domestic internet giants have launched "red envelope wars" to compete for large model traffic入口. In this context, computing resources have not only become a focal point of this arms race but are also gradually turning into a "seller's market" as various AI applications are trialed, becoming a core budget constraint for AI deployment. Consequently, the computing power supply chain is expected to return to the forefront of tech investment, supported by strong performance fundamentals.
According to statistics from Securities Times·DataBa, 25 East Data West Computing concept stocks in the A-share market have received institutional ratings. Among them, stocks like Zhongji Innolight, TFC Optical Communication, and Envicool have been rated by over 20 institutions. Stocks with high institutional attention are mainly concentrated in areas such as CPO, liquid cooling, AI computing power, servers, and AIDC.
Comments