The AI battle during the 2026 Spring Festival is raging more fiercely than anticipated.
At midnight on February 1st, Tencent's "Get on Yuanbao, Share 1 Billion" campaign officially launched.
This signifies that the "Normandy Landing" against AI social sovereignty, which Pony Ma previewed at the employee conference, has now entered a full-scale, all-out combat phase.
"Yuanbao links are flooding the group chats!" In the early hours of February 1st, many WeChat users discovered that their previously silent school and work groups were being spammed with links bearing the "Yuanbao New Year Red Packet Draw" identifier.
After midnight on February 1st, numerous active WeChat groups witnessed a surge of spontaneous sharing behavior.
Unlike purely promotional campaigns for user acquisition in the past, Yuanbao's rule design is highly "socially sticky": users primarily earn chances for prize draws or card draws through interactions like sharing red packets, creating "same-style" content within Yuanbao, and chatting with Yuanbao.
This mechanism forces users seeking more draws to return to WeChat's vast social network to find "assists."
Notably, searching related keywords on WeChat reveals that many users have specifically created "AI Red Packet Sharing Groups" to "fleece the wool" from major tech companies.
In random observations, a group named "AI Red Packet Sharing Group" had a blunt announcement: "Specifically for AI big companies to throw money around, link sharing group, post freely, no restrictions."
This primal motivation of "socializing for red packets" propelled the Yuanbao AI application to the center of the social scene within just a few hours.
According to official Tencent data, on the first night of the campaign, the most enticing "Ten Thousand Yuan Cash Pony Card" had been flipped over ten times.
The main event is divided into three rounds, opening cash withdrawals for the previous round's red packets after midnight on February 4th, February 10th, and February 17th, respectively.
To chase the ten-thousand-yuan grand prize, netizens have even compiled "unofficial guides" on how to trigger hidden tasks by conversing with Yuanbao and how to strategically post red packet links in Moments to maximize draw frequency.
To encourage more user interaction with Yuanbao, a special "Blessing Phrase Red Packet" feature was set up outside the main event.
During the campaign, blessing phrases will be distributed irregularly through various channels each day; users who obtain a phrase can open the Yuanbao App, enter the specified phrase in the "Ask Yuanbao" dialog box, and have a chance to trigger a blessing red packet, with the luckiest potentially grabbing large red packets of 188 yuan or 888 yuan.
However, beneath the lively surface lies a defensive harvest of AI traffic by Tencent.
By updating the Yuanbao App to version 2.55.0 and placing a prominent "Grab 1 Billion" entry point on the homepage, Tencent aims to rapidly build user dependency on the Yuanbao App within a fortnight through the most traditional cash incentives, thereby countering the traffic offensives of competitors like DeepSeek and ERNIE Bot during the Spring Festival period.
Although the "over ten ten-thousand-yuan cards flipped overnight" and "screens full of shared links" allowed Yuanbao to fire the first successful shot at the outset, this remains a costly user acquisition drive.
While the scale of 1 billion yuan is staggering, the core challenge persists: are users clicking because of the "red packets" or staying for the "AI"?
When the New Year's Eve bell fades, whether Yuanbao can successfully retain the users who downloaded it for mutual aid and sharing groups is a question Tencent must confront.
Currently, Tencent Yuanbao's New Year campaign will run until February 17th.
This "money-throwing battle" among AI giants is not just a contest of financial muscle, but more crucially, a test of who can transform the temporary "buzz" generated by red packets into lasting "connectivity."
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