Meituan holds Zhipu AI shares worth approximately HK$17 billion, making it one of the top profit earners in the AI sector.

Meituan holds Zhipu AI shares worth approximately HK$17 billion, making it one of the top profit earners in the AI sector.

AI is a money-burning business, but investing in AI is profitable, making Meituan one of the few giants to have made substantial profits in AI.

In its 2025 financial report, Meituan disclosed a figure: gains from changes in fair value reached RMB 1.49 billion. This stems from the increased valuations of many AI and robotics companies Meituan has invested in.

In the first quarter, Meituan's gains from changes in fair value are expected to reach a record high.

Zhipu, whose stock price surged after its listing early this year, counted Meituan as an early investor. According to prospectus data, Meituan holds a 4.27% stake. After Zhipu's listing, its stock price continued to rise, reaching a market cap of approximately HK$300 billion by the end of the first quarter, compared to its pre-IPO valuation of RMB 24.4 billion. This means Meituan's stake in Zhipu generated unrealized gains of HK$12 billion in fair value changes for the first quarter.

In addition to investment gains, Meituan has frequently launched AI products over the past six months, beginning to tell more AI-related stories.

▌1. Frequent AI Product Launches: Are the Tech Enthusiasts Catching On Late?

On April 14, at the Wuzhen Health Summit, Meituan unveiled the AI product 'Xiaotuan Health Manager,' focusing on family health management, along with a paid membership service called 'Health Card.'

To many, Meituan's AI product resembles Alibaba's health product 'Afu,' marking Meituan's first foray into AI-powered health services.

In fact, Meituan has intensively rolled out multiple AI products over the past two to three months.

In March this year, Meituan's 'Guangnian Zhiwai' team launched the public beta of 'Tabbit AI Browser,' capable of automatically opening web pages, extracting information, filling out forms, integrating data across platforms, and delivering results. This marks Meituan's first standalone internet tool product in years.

Additionally, earlier this year, Meituan launched the AI search product 'Wen Xiaotuan,' enabling consumers to filter products and stores via AI, positioning it as an AI assistant for consumer transactions. Even earlier, in September 2025, Meituan's public beta of its first native AI application, the 'Xiaomei' App, served as a local life secretary, allowing users to complete restaurant selection and food delivery orders with a single voice command.

These are Meituan's front-end products. Additionally, there is the LongCat large model family: including the LongCat-Flash-Omni model achieving full modality coverage, the LongCat-Image model supporting high-quality text-to-image generation and dialogue-based image editing, and the LongCat-Video-Avatar model focusing on realistic digital humans.

It is evident that Meituan is actively integrating its business with AI. Since the dawn of the 'Hundred Models War' in 2020, Meituan has rarely been associated with AI.

Despite this low profile, some in the capital markets harbor a 'strange confidence' in Meituan.

They believe that, unlike other leading AI companies managed by 'liberal arts' teams, Meituan's management team, with its STEM background, may have longer-term plans and clearer development paths for AI, simply 'staying focused and less vocal.'

Of course, Meituan and its founder, Wang Xing, made early moves in AI and robotics. Among current popular AI products, Meituan invested in Zhipu AI and Yuezhi Anmian in their early stages.

Meituan invested in Zhipu AI during its Series B+ round. Zhipu AI's market cap once reached HK$430 billion, while Meituan's market cap fell to just under HK$500 billion in the first quarter of this year.

Moreover, Meituan Dragonball participated in both the Series A and Series A+ rounds of Yuezhi Anmian.

Meituan's domestic layout (layout) in embodied AI is even more extensive, including companies like Unitree Robotics, Yinhe General, Flexiv Robotics, Tashan Zhihang, and Autovariable Robotics. Unitree Robotics and Yuezhi Anmian have already filed for or are pursuing listings.

The AI and robotics companies Meituan has invested in are expected to drive significant increases in Meituan's gains from changes in fair value in the first quarter of this year.

▌2. Strategic Defense or Offense?

Although Meituan has extensive layout (layouts) in AI and robotics, its stock price has not seen a corresponding boost.

In stark contrast, Alibaba's market cap surged from around HK$70 per share in early 2025 to nearly HK$190 per ADR, reaching a market cap of over HK$3 trillion, with half of that growth driven by its AI strategy. Some even argue that, had it not been for underperformance in its local services and e-commerce segments, Alibaba could have achieved an even higher market cap.

Meituan's local services business has faced challenges from Alibaba and JD, leading to a sharp decline in its stock price. In March this year, Meituan's market cap stood at around RMB 410 billion, with its stock price falling to as low as HK$73.6 per share, a 50% drop from early 2025 and nearing its two-year low.

At this juncture, Meituan's emphasis on AI products may be a defensive move to prevent AI from disrupting its business.

In March this year, Didi launched AI-powered ride-hailing, while Doubao integrated product functionality this year. Earlier, Alibaba's Qianwen had already been integrated into services like Hema and Flash Sales.

Currently, AI has not yet significantly disrupted product selection, but we must remain vigilant about its potential to penetrate Meituan's review business.

For Meituan, AI may represent more than just financial gains.

Over the past two years, Meituan has been preoccupied with competing against JD and Alibaba in local services, neglecting another critical front: AI and its potential impact on local services.

One of Meituan's core strengths lies in its vast merchant and user ecosystem, represented by Dianping, where users have spent two decades building a comprehensive rating and review system for domestic local service merchants—a crucial data asset for Meituan in the local services sector.

However, recent practices such as paid promotions and fake reviews on Dianping have undermined its authenticity, prompting Alibaba's Gaode Maps to launch its own street-level ranking system.

AI could alter consumer decision-making paths. If startups, ByteDance, or Alibaba use AI products to disrupt Meituan's rating system—for example, by using AI to organize merchant reviews and enable users to filter merchants with a single voice command—Meituan could find itself in a passive position.

From this perspective, AI poses a threat to service-oriented companies like Meituan with vast, complex ecosystems.

▌3. Can AI Become the Main Narrative for Meituan in the Capital Markets?

Can Meituan, like Alibaba and ByteDance, drive market cap/valuation growth through AI? I believe the answer hinges on two factors.

First, whether it can launch a blockbuster product.

Meituan has made significant AI investments, but they lack a cohesive system. Its AI lineup lacks the entry-level dominance of ByteDance and Alibaba, nor does it have a clear product matrix.

Currently, the three pillars of AI—conversational AI, video generation, and coding—are all areas where Meituan is present. However, after five years of competition in these fields, the market landscape has stabilized, making it difficult for Meituan to catch up.

Second, whether it has businesses that can directly boost revenue.

For example, behind the AI competition between Alibaba and ByteDance lies the competition in MaaS (Model as a Service), which currently generates direct revenue.

However, Meituan's AI efforts are primarily focused on internal efficiency improvements, making it difficult to showcase tangible AI achievements in its financial reports.

Of course, Meituan's long-term advantage in AI may lie in embodied AI services.

In addition to investing in leading AI model companies, Meituan has invested in a significant portion of China's embodied AI sector. The future applications of robotics, aside from factories, will be in lifestyle services, such as delivery robots, autonomous delivery vehicles, drone food delivery, housekeeping robots, and cooking robots—all businesses relevant to Meituan.

If Meituan can transform its AI narrative into a robotics narrative, replacing its courier-based moat with a 'machine replacement' story, it could gain an early advantage in the capital markets.