Alibaba is turning its AI assistant into a "superapp". What will this do for businesses?

China's largest online retailer Alibaba plans to link its flagship online shopping and travel services with its own AI assistant Qwen, taking the biggest step toward turning Qwen into a unified AI platform for users, Bloomberg writes. Alibaba's Qwen has previously been called the " ChatGPTkiller." Last November - a week after its release - it was downloaded 10 million times.

Alibaba Group plans to link with Qwen such services as Taobao, Alipay, travel service Fliggy and Amap, Bloomberg writes. The idea is to eventually help Qwen's 100 million users make purchases, book trips and pay for services through one AI platform. The new integrated features are already available for public testing in China, the agency notes.

At a presentation on January 15, company executives demonstrated how the new Qwen features work. The first tests showed that the app is able to handle basic tasks - for example, it allows users to directly pay for food delivery within the app. However, Qwen has not yet been able to generate links to products in response to a request to buy a hiking sweater, indicating that the chatbot does not fully integrate all categories of purchases, the agency notes.

The ambitious project highlights how companies - from Amazon to Meta Platforms - are exploring agent-based AI, in which artificial intelligence helps humans perform real-world tasks. Companies like Alibaba and Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent Holdings, which already run "super apps" with hundreds of different services, are seen as having an initial advantage in this area, Bloomberg notes.

Alibaba launched Qwen in November 2025. By gradually integrating individual services with the AI platform under the umbrella of Alibaba, the company expects to turn Qwen into a universal personal assistant.

Alibaba shares were down 2.6% in Hong Kong on January 15 after rising nearly 20% in the previous four trading sessions. They were losing 0.41% in the New York premarket. "This decline is just profit-taking, a classic 'sell-as-you-go' situation after a rally, not a valuation of the latest Qwen app update," Stephen Leung, executive director of UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong, noted in a Bloomberg commentary. Alibaba's securities have added 104% since mid-January 2025.

Of the 43 analysts covering the online retailer's stock, 37 advise buying it. Five are neutral and advise to hold the securities in the portfolio, and only one advises to sell.

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts estimate that Alibaba is able to develop a new format of user interaction through Qwen with less additional investment than its Chinese and global technology rivals. While U.S. apps such as OpenAI's ChatGPT are not available in China, Alibaba faces stiff competition from domestic rivals in the PRC, including ByteDance's Doubao, Bloomberg notes. By some measures, the service is the most popular in the Chinese market and, according to QuestMobile, had about 172 million monthly active users at the end of September 2025, Bloomberg writes.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor