In today's AI-dominated landscape, is it too late for Alibaba to carve out an AI-native super portal?

The data offers a resounding answer. Just 23 days after its launch, QianWen soared to 30 million monthly active users (MAUs), making it the fastest-growing AI application on a global scale. According to QuestMobile, as of the end of the third quarter this year, Tencent Yuanbao, Jimeng AI, and Kimi boasted MAUs of 32.86 million, 10.12 million, and 9.67 million, respectively.

QianWen's meteoric rise is rooted in its alignment with the accelerating trends in the AI industry and its robust product capabilities, which have propelled it onto a unique growth trajectory.

From an industry standpoint, the maturing Agent ecosystem is continuously unlocking deeper value for AI applications. Presently, the Agent ecosystem has reached a stage where models can be extensively leveraged to tackle more practical problems, laying the groundwork for AI applications to transition from mere conversation starters to practical problem-solvers.

QianWen has precisely capitalized on this structural shift within the industry. Leveraging the advanced capabilities of the Qwen large model, QianWen now reliably handles high-quality office and learning tasks. The free availability of its four new features—AI PPT, AI Writing, AI Library, and AI Question Explanation—has further enabled QianWen to evolve from an 'application tool' to a driver of 'social productivity'.

/ 01 / Beyond User Growth: A Testament to AI's Value

The achievement of 30 million MAUs in just 23 days signifies more than just impressive user growth; it represents an explosion of long-suppressed demand. Chinese users' hunger for high-quality generative AI is not a niche trend but rather a pre-existing 'demand reservoir'.

The rapid growth of QianWen fundamentally reflects a shift in user mindset.

Over the past year, many perceived generative AI as a 'novelty toy'—enjoyable but lacking stable, long-term use cases.

Today, users are no longer seeking AI that can merely 'chat or crack jokes'; instead, they desire productivity tools that genuinely enhance efficiency, solve problems, and seamlessly integrate into their work and daily lives.

QianWen's user growth trend indicates that:

- Users are now willing to frequently open an AI application;

- They trust it with real-world tasks such as writing, organizing, analyzing, creating, and learning;

- They embrace AI as a recurring tool in their workflow rather than a one-time experience.

This marks a true turning point for China's AI application market, signaling the dawn of the 'application era'.

QianWen has clearly recognized this mindset shift. Upon surpassing 30 million users, it simultaneously rolled out four core features—AI PPT, AI Writing, AI Library, and AI Question Explanation—completing a crucial transition from user acquisition to value delivery.

The AI PPT feature addresses pain points in corporate office efficiency, generating polished presentations with a single command. It supports 39 input formats, including documents, images, and voice, and offers over 100,000 free templates for customization.

AI Writing covers an extensive range of tasks, including essays, novels, theses, official documents, contracts, resumes, and planning schemes, handling virtually all common writing needs with ease.

AI Library positions itself as a 'one-sentence information retrieval' tool, with a database encompassing hundreds of millions of exam papers, learning materials, and sheet music. Its conversational search interface delivers precise, direct information retrieval.

AI Question Explanation revolutionizes learning scenarios—QianWen can grade entire pages of homework with a single click, automatically generating diagnoses of weaknesses, explanations for mistakes, and learning summaries, effectively embedding a personal tutor into the app.

The launch of these four AI features transcends mere 'updates'; they collectively position QianWen as a catalyst for productivity enhancement and social equity.

AI PPT and AI Writing target knowledge workers, integrating AI deeply into content creation workflows and significantly boosting societal knowledge production efficiency, offering a 'dimensionality reduction' advantage over traditional office software.

AI Library and AI Question Explanation precisely target the 'education and knowledge services' sector, leveraging AI to lower information access barriers and provide personalized tutoring, showcasing AI's vast potential in promoting educational equity and knowledge accessibility.

Together, these four features chart a clear path: QianWen is accelerating toward 'scenario-driven deep integration', evolving from a chatbot to a problem-solving tool.

/ 02 / Not Just an Alibaba Triumph, But a Chinese AI Milestone

Looking back, QianWen's success stems from Alibaba AI's long-term investment in building full-stack capabilities.

Today, Alibaba stands as the only global enterprise, besides Google, with end-to-end mastery of the 'chip-cloud-model-application' technology stack. This comprehensive layout has propelled Qwen (QianWen) into the ranks of the world's most powerful open-source models.

The underlying logic is that breakthroughs in large models arise not from isolated efforts but from the collaborative iteration of foundational computing power, mid-level frameworks, and upper-level scenarios. Alibaba's end-to-end ecosystem—from self-developed chips to upper-layer applications—has endowed Qwen with unique advantages in architectural design, training efficiency, and scenario adaptation, culminating in its status as a globally leading open-source large model.

The model's strength has been thoroughly validated by the market: to date, QianWen has open-sourced over 300 full-modal models, spanning sizes from 0.5B to 480B parameters, with over 600 million downloads in global mainstream model communities and over 170,000 derivative models. Its robust model capabilities now reliably support high-quality office and learning tasks—QianWen's success is, fundamentally, a natural extension of its technological edge.

From a longer-term perspective, as the vanguard of Alibaba's AI strategy, QianWen's 30 million MAUs mark just the beginning.

Backed by Alibaba's ecosystem, QianWen enjoys two distinct advantages: first, Alibaba's sustained long-term investment enables continuous enhancement of its 'problem-solving capabilities', extending its reach from text-based tasks to complex decision-making scenarios; second, Alibaba's unparalleled breadth of real-world scenarios—spanning map navigation, food delivery, Taobao shopping, Fliggy travel, and more—provides fertile ground for AI value realization, as these domains are where AI can most readily deliver tangible benefits.

Aligned with the AI industry's core logic of 'technology enabling real-world scenarios', Alibaba's pervasive presence across daily life naturally nurtures QianWen's growth. In practice:

- In travel scenarios, AI optimizes navigation routes by integrating real-time traffic data and user habits;

- In lifestyle services, AI delivers personalized recommendations based on consumption preferences;

- In shopping, AI-powered smart customer service reduces communication and transaction costs. Such scenario-driven ecosystems are pivotal in transforming AI from an abstract concept into a tangible, user-centric experience.

This positions QianWen to evolve beyond document writing and PPT creation, moving toward a new identity: 'AI as a service gateway, Alibaba's ecosystem as a service operating system'.

With deep integration of models and scenarios, QianWen will form a self-reinforcing flywheel of 'task feedback—model iteration—application upgrades': real-world tasks enrich model training, accelerating technological refinement and driving service enhancements.

As AI enters the era of mass adoption, all enterprises face a common challenge: translating 'technological reserves' into 'real-world demand solutions' and upgrading 'model capabilities' into 'social productivity'. QianWen offers a clear blueprint—in the real world of AI deployment, delivering deep value matters far more than model benchmark scores.

This marks a core milestone in China's AI evolution from 1.0 to 2.0 and likely a key trend shaping the industry over the next decade.