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Author | Huang Yu
At the beginning of 2025, the emergence of DeepSeek R1 caused global developers to experience sleepless nights filled with technological anxiety; a year later, during the Spring Festival of 2026, this smoke will be reignited in a more &#34;festive&#34; manner on the social and shopping carts of 1.4 billion people.
On February 2, the AI-native application Qianwen APP under Alibaba announced an investment of 3 billion yuan to launch the &#34;Spring Festival Treat Plan,&#34; connecting with Hema, Fliggy, Damai, Taobao Flash Sale, Tmall Supermarket, and other Alibaba ecosystem businesses, inviting people nationwide to &#34;eat, drink, and have fun&#34; during the Spring Festival through free meals and high-value red envelopes.
This is not only the largest investment in a Spring Festival activity in Alibaba's history but also sets a new upper limit for this year's big tech AI red envelope battle.
On the surface, this seems to be another traditional &#34;spending money for traffic&#34; game. However, industry insiders believe that this hefty expenditure of 3 billion yuan is essentially not just simple marketing, but a survival game concerning the control of entry points in the AI era.
Alibaba is testing an ambitious path: through &#34;saturation attacks&#34; on high-frequency life scenarios, it aims to induce users to shift their ordering decision-making power from finger clicks to AI commands, thus achieving a historic migration from &#34;traffic entry&#34; to &#34;system-level entry.&#34;
For a long time, the moats of internet giants have been built on the high walls of numerous apps. Users open Taobao when shopping, switch to Fliggy when booking tickets, and jump to Taopiaopiao when watching movies. This &#34;island-style&#34; consumption path has been the cornerstone of the platform economy's distribution efficiency.
However, the rise of AI Agents is breaking down these walls.
On January 15, Qianwen APP announced that it had integrated with Taobao Flash Sale, Alipay, Taobao, Fliggy, Amap, and other Alibaba ecosystem scenarios to test AI shopping functions.
Insiders from Qianwen APP revealed to Wall Street Insight: &#34;The release two weeks ago was actually preparing for the Spring Festival offensive. Most AI assistants on the market are still in the chat phase, while Qianwen hopes to integrate into people's real-life consumption during this Spring Festival.&#34;
This &#34;capable of handling tasks&#34; logic is the core support of Qianwen's Spring Festival offensive.
Some netizens noticed that when querying movie tickets, they can already purchase tickets on the main dialogue page of Qianwen APP. Wall Street Insight learned from insiders that the AI movie ticket purchasing function is currently in gray testing and will soon be fully launched.
So, for Alibaba, is this 3 billion yuan business worth it?
From a financial statement perspective, 3 billion is undoubtedly a significant capital expenditure. However, in the second half of the AI big model, the definition of customer acquisition costs is being rewritten.
Last Spring Festival, the explosive popularity of DeepSeek made the market realize that pure technological leadership can lead to explosive word-of-mouth. However, as the AI competition enters the second half, the generational gap in model capabilities is narrowing, and the &#34;DeepSeek-style&#34; technological dividend is difficult to replicate. Clearly, enhancing &#34;work capability&#34; and quickly capturing user mindset is the core strategy Alibaba wants to adopt to compete for the super entry point in the AI era
But how to retain users and how to create a commercial closed loop for AI remains the sword of Damocles hanging over all major companies.
Through the most universal method of &#34;treating guests,&#34; Alibaba attempts to complete a nationwide AI cognitive enlightenment within half a month.
If 3 billion can make hundreds of millions of users accustomed to &#34;turning to AI when needed,&#34; then Alibaba will have seized the most expensive commercial real estate of the AI era—the first touchpoint of user intent. Once this migration path of the &#34;system-level entry&#34; is proven feasible, Qianwen will no longer be just a tool app, but an AI operating system covering all scenarios.
At that time, traditional search advertising and information flow recommendations will transform into AI intelligent distribution, and the commercial value behind this is far beyond the mere 3 billion.
In addition, during the peak traffic period of the Spring Festival, this battle is also a stress test of Alibaba's ecological synergy capabilities. This event has gathered almost all of Alibaba's &#34;elite troops,&#34; including Taobao, Alipay, and Amap, and this seamless integration across business lines will be rigorously tested during the Spring Festival.
However, this Spring Festival battle is destined to be filled with smoke.
By the Spring Festival of 2026, the AI competition among major companies has entered a fever pitch. This year, Tencent's Yuanbao took the lead in launching the first shot of the Spring Festival red envelope, investing 1 billion in cash red envelopes, Baidu Wenxin launched a 500 million Spring Festival red envelope campaign, while Doubao, a subsidiary of ByteDance, secured the exclusive interactive partnership position for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
In this traditional formation of &#34;red envelope rain,&#34; Alibaba chose a heavier path. It is not satisfied with merely giving users money; it wants to use the powerful bait of &#34;free orders&#34; to exchange for users' &#34;initial experience&#34; of the AI consumption chain.
According to the official WeChat account of the Qianwen APP, the &#34;Qianwen Spring Festival Treating Guests Plan&#34; will officially launch on February 6, emphasizing &#34;eating, drinking, playing, and enjoying free orders continuously,&#34; along with large cash red envelopes. However, regarding the specific rules for free orders, Alibaba stated to Wall Street Insight that further rules will be released later.
Last year was a time for &#34;deep thinking,&#34; while this year is the time for &#34;AI Agents.&#34; Behind this shift is the collective anxiety of internet giants over reaching the peak of growth. When the growth dividends of apps have been exhausted, whoever can define the consumption paradigm of the AI era first will hold the discourse power in the next decade.
Qianwen's 3 billion offensive is like a deep-water bomb thrown into a calm lake. But whether it can truly ignite the AI shopping year and popularize the lifestyle of the AI era remains to be seen

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The Spring Festival AI red envelope battle has begun

- In early 2026, Alibaba announced a 30 billion yuan initiative through its AI-native app Qianwen to engage users during the Spring Festival, aiming to promote consumption through "free meals" and substantial cash rewards.  
- This initiative represents Alibaba's largest investment for the holiday, targeting the transition from traditional consumer paths to AI-driven decision-making and enhancing user engagement with AI in everyday purchases.  
- As competition intensifies among tech giants, including Tencent and Baidu, this strategy seeks to attract users by making AI integral to their shopping experiences, with the potential to redefine consumer interactions in the AI era.

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Qianwen's 3 billion free order launch analysis: Alibaba pushes AI to the forefront of Spring Festival consumption