Within just a week of its public beta launch, downloads of Alibaba's AI assistant, the QianWen App, soared past 10 million—this was the impressive initial performance report released in November.

Several institutions and media outlets have reported that this remarkable speed has set a new historical benchmark for AI applications. The QianWen App has been lauded as the fastest-growing AI app in history, outpacing competitors like ChatGPT, Sora, and DeepSeek.

Following this news, Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares saw a boost, surging over 4% at one point during intraday trading. After navigating the 'first half' of large-scale model development, China's tech giants are now fiercely competing for entry points in the AI-to-Consumer (AI to C) market.

The QianWen App made its public beta debut on November 17th, leveraging Alibaba's global Tongyi QianWen model.

According to official descriptions, the QianWen App is designed not only to engage in dialogue with users but also to gradually cover a wide range of life scenarios, including office work, maps, health, and shopping.

Alibaba has stated that the initial version of the QianWen App aims to create a personal AI assistant capable of both chatting and handling tasks. This is a crucial goal for QianWen as it seeks to establish itself as a future AI lifestyle gateway.

On November 17th, Alibaba officially announced the launch of the 'QianWen' project, with the QianWen App public beta version simultaneously going live on major app stores. It also provides web and PC access points, directly competing with ChatGPT.

Notably, the launch window for QianWen was extremely short. While applications like ChatGPT, Sora, and DeepSeek typically took weeks or even longer to reach the 10 million user milestone globally or domestically, QianWen achieved this feat in just seven days, marking an exceptionally rapid and concentrated surge in popularity.

QianWen is available on major Android app stores and the Apple App Store, and it has also 'migrated' existing users from the former 'Tongyi' App.

According to statistics from multiple data agencies, in the third quarter of 2025, the Tongyi App had just over 3 million monthly active users. In contrast, competitors like ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek had already reached hundreds of millions in monthly active users—a significant 'disparity'.

Earlier in the first half of 2024, the Tongyi App's active rate (DAU/MAU) was only 14.3%, with users spending an average of 4.3 days per month on the app. Both metrics significantly lagged behind those of competitors like Doubao and Wenxin Yiyan.

Despite its strong technical capabilities, user engagement and frequency of use for the Tongyi App clearly fell short.

For an extended period, Alibaba's AI efforts were primarily focused on the B-end (business) and cloud sectors. In contrast, ByteDance leveraged its Douyin ecosystem to propel Doubao into the role of a 'national AI assistant'. Tencent embedded its Hunyuan model into the WeChat ecosystem, and DeepSeek attracted developers through its 'cost-effectiveness' and open-source reputation.

Meanwhile, the Qwen large model initially catered to enterprise clients on Alibaba Cloud, establishing a foothold in the B-end market. Its C-end (consumer) efforts, however, seemed more like an 'afterthought'.

This time, Alibaba rebranded the original Tongyi App as 'QianWen', launched a new domain name, and unified its C-end product lineup under the 'QianWen' banner. The 'Tongyi Lab' remains within the cloud infrastructure, focusing on foundational large model research and development.

Elevated from a 'technology demonstration window' to an official AI assistant, QianWen's positioning has become clearer and more strategic.

Since its full open-source release in 2023, the Qwen series has repeatedly set new benchmarks in various evaluations, surpassing competitors like Llama and DeepSeek in some metrics. It has earned the reputation of being 'one of the world's most powerful and widely applied open-source large models'.

More importantly, its influence has expanded beyond China's developer community.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky publicly stated that the company is 'heavily reliant on Qwen', believing it outperforms some commercial closed-source models in terms of speed and performance.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also mentioned in public that Qwen holds a significant share in the global open-source model market.

Prior to the emergence of QianWen, China's AI app landscape had largely stabilized, with Doubao and DeepSeek firmly occupying the top two spots. Tech giants like Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance integrated their proprietary large models into their respective super apps.

The emergence of QianWen has intensified the 'entry point battle'. It has adopted a strategy of being free, acting as a universal assistant, and deeply integrating with Alibaba's ecosystem, thereby differentiating itself from ChatGPT Plus and some paid models.

In the future, users will choose AI not solely based on model rankings but on which entry point genuinely solves their problems and enhances their daily lives.

Several key variables will shape the outcome of this competition:

Retention Rates and Usage Frequency: Whether Alibaba can improve these metrics depends on its ability to deeply embed QianWen into more essential and frequently used scenarios.

Ecosystem Integration and Commercial Closed-Loop: How will a free, powerful model like QianWen achieve long-term profitability while maintaining its user base?

Global Competition and Regulatory Navigation: If QianWen aims for international markets, it must find suitable paths under varying regulatory frameworks and cultural contexts.

References:

https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/3499286.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.ithome.com/0/899/727.htm

https://www.stdaily.com/web/gdxw/2025-11/24/content_436729.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://finance.sina.cn/tech/2025-11-17/detail-infxteha4879294.d.html?fromtech=1&vt=4&utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://cj.sina.com.cn/articles/view/3093070657/b85c834100101pt6a?utm_source=chatgpt.com