Major internet firms embark on a journey of introspection.

Author: Xue Xingxing | Editor: He Jian | Cover Design: Party A and Party B

Zhipu, a company established just seven years ago with annual revenues capped at 700 million yuan, is on a meteoric rise towards a market valuation in the trillions of Hong Kong dollars, leaving behind industry veterans such as JD.com, Baidu, and Meituan. Only the behemoths Alibaba and Tencent, with their colossal scale, appear resilient to disruption, clinging to a semblance of their former glory.

Kimi, previously unhurried in its pursuit of an initial public offering, swiftly initiated a new funding round with a pre-investment valuation soaring to $31.5 billion, following a prior round valued at $20 billion. Media outlets highlighted that "Kimi's revenue trajectory now mirrors Anthropic's early commercialization phase."

Anthropic, despite never setting foot on Chinese soil, continues to inspire successive generations of Chinese AI startups.

The South Korean government, long criticized for its perceived incompetence, now exudes a newfound vigor, akin to parents finally having a son after years of daughters. Buoyed by soaring memory prices and the success of Samsung and SK Hynix, the South Korean stock market has repeatedly reached all-time highs, heralding the "10,000-point era."

Media reports indicate that South Koreans now average two stock accounts, with Xiaohongshu users envying the "golden age of humanity" described by South Korean women. With prosperity comes indulgence, as South Korea's birth rate surged to a seven-year high in April.

LatePost recently delved into the fierce AI talent war among Chinese companies, where individuals born in 1998 already occupy mid-level positions, 17-year-old AI interns command daily salaries of 5,500 yuan, and young AI researchers view their earnings with nonchalance, stating, "An extra million or two doesn't matter." In the AI era, money seems to possess a different exchange rate, akin to "Shanghai currency." Though physically present with us, their hearts belong to another golden age.

Yet, Chinese CEOs, dreaming of an AI golden age, are consumed by anxiety. On one hand, they continually emphasize their company's AI ambitions and grand visions to the outside world; on the other, they grapple with the fear of being left behind by technological advancements and their businesses becoming obsolete.

Faced with the dual challenges of stagnant external growth and falling behind on the technological frontier, they are compelled to look inward. If technical problems prove insurmountable, they must first address attitude and organizational issues.

Over the past two years, Li Auto's organizational restructuring has been as frequent as new energy vehicle model updates, abandoning Huawei's model, reshaping sales strategies, emphasizing embodied intelligence, and reforming autonomous driving. Li Xiang's quest for learning and reform seems unending.

However, at Li Auto's shareholder meeting, confronted with investors who had suffered significant losses despite investing real money, even the usually confident Li Xiang had to concede his shortcomings, admitting he wasn't skilled at refined operations.

Reports from Yi Jian Auto revealed that shareholders' inquiries spanned company strategic planning, internal operations, and even product design. Shareholders questioned Li Auto's overly simplistic interiors, product uniformity, and the removal of the small steering wheel screen. Yet, no one inquired about the AI field, which Li Xiang was more concerned about.

Wang Xing, once a source of inspiration for Li Xiang, has lost his former luster. Faced with the company's plummeting stock price, he confessed at the shareholder meeting, "I feel a heavy sense of responsibility." Rarely admitting fault in public, he acknowledged that Meituan's community group-buying strategy, Meituan Select, had veered off course, and that Meituan's overseas expansion had come too late, missing the window for overseas food delivery and instant retail.

Media reports particularly emphasized that Wang Xing now appears "gray-haired," with streaks of white at his temples. Wang Xing is only 47 this year, nearly 20 years away from the mandatory retirement age, yet the media already scrutinizes his gray hair.

We can no longer refer to him as 'Xing Ge.' According to Xing Ge's latest directive, we should now address each other by our full names to diminish hierarchical labels and reduce the sense of distance between superiors and subordinates. This is the primary improvement action in Meituan's 2026 core strategy of "organizational cultural innovation," which also includes eliminating bureaucratic processes and adhering to long-termism. —Dong Ge, are you listening?

It's not just Meituan emphasizing the need to improve organizational processes. Even ByteDance, which has always prided itself on being "candid and clear" and "always in startup mode," now admits to suffering from "big company diseases."

In a recent company-wide letter, Liang Rubo demanded that all middle and senior managers cease sitting in their offices long-term, poring over reports and listening to briefings. Instead, they must regularly immerse themselves in the frontlines of business, products, and users to confront real business problems.

Or, as ByteDance employees lament, the company has hired too many individuals from Alibaba. Even with excellent tools like Feishu, they can't prevent the accumulation of "white rabbits" (passive employees) and the prevalence of "wild dogs" (aggressive but undisciplined employees). The writing skills honed through Feishu documents might now be used by ByteDance employees for workplace espionage and paid content creation.

No one fantasizes about jumping ship with ByteDance anymore. Six years ago, 28-year-old Guo Yu announced his retirement from ByteDance, achieving financial freedom through stock options. Six years later, a former ByteDance employee who amassed wealth through stock trading stated that working could only maintain his current lifestyle, and "the probability of achieving financial freedom through investment is far greater than climbing the ranks at ByteDance to a 4-1 level."

ByteDance may be the Chinese internet company that has most adeptly navigated change, from recommendation algorithms to short videos, live-stream e-commerce, short dramas, and online literature—it hasn't missed any growth opportunities. Now, Doubao is also the largest C-end application in China by user volume in the AI era.

Even so, Liang Rubo can't conceal his anxiety and calls for realigning organizational culture with leadership requirements. The new leadership principles, besides requiring managers to go to the frontlines, also demand "a sense of crisis, maintaining an external perspective," "pursuing high-level goals," and "daring to set ambitious targets."

The last time Liang Rubo sent a company-wide letter was shortly after he took over as ByteDance CEO in 2022. The core content of that letter was to reduce employee burden by changing bi-monthly OKRs to quarterly OKRs. Liang Rubo stated at the time that most of ByteDance's businesses were relatively mature, with insignificant bi-monthly changes, allowing for longer-cycle reviews.

Faced with the AI wave, the only one remaining as steady as a mountain and calm as still water might be Zhang Xiaolong, Guangzhou's biggest Kent cigarette consumer. A few days ago, WeChat finally began internal testing of its native AI assistant, "Xiaowei," integrating AI capabilities into the WeChat ecosystem.

However, this feature, dubbed by the media as the "biggest update in WeChat's history," doesn't even have a separate Tab bar. Users must click a button in the top-left corner of the main interface to access it, as if afraid they might find it. It could learn from Alibaba, which today stuffs a Douyin-like feature into Taobao, tomorrow shoves a Meituan-like service into Gaode Maps, and constantly pops up AI ads.

Pony Ma, who has always dreamed of replicating WeChat Red Packets' success, finally realized he hadn't even boarded the ship after experiencing the failure of Yuanbao's red packet feature. At Tencent's shareholder meeting more than a month ago, he said that a year ago they thought they had boarded the ship, only to later find it was leaking. Now they feel they've stepped on board but still can't sit comfortably. Ma also kept making excuses, saying Tencent doesn't necessarily have to be the fastest to seize opportunities but insists on taking the right path, combining its unique advantages to proceed steadily. "We can't just rush in and seize others' territory because they're doing something. We've done that before but basically failed every time."

Alibaba is more astute. Amid doubts from DingTalk's public opinion crisis and rumors of core AI talent departures, Jack Ma's solution was to take his partners to the fields to transplant rice seedlings, collectively undergoing a re-education in Alibaba's culture. Reminiscing about the past while savoring the present, he defused the crisis.

As Dickens said at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This line is so classic that countless people have applied it to countless eras countless times. But it seems no era fits quite as perfectly as the present one.

No one doubts AI's dramatic transformation, but everyone doubts whether they can keep up. Faced with the overwhelming AI iterations from newcomers, the giants seem collectively trapped in a midlife crisis. Like all incompetent middle-aged fathers, one way they gain a sense of security is by reaffirming values and discipline.

Perhaps only Pinduoduo is free from these anxieties. During this year's first-quarter earnings call, Pinduoduo's management focused on promoting internal organizational management restructuring, actively shouldering social responsibilities as a platform enterprise, and continuously deepening supply chain investment and upgrades.

Whether it was Chen Lei or Zhao Jialin, neither mentioned AI throughout the entire call. This is where their sense of propriety lies.

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