The Battle for the AI Gateway: Who Will Have the Last Laugh?

This Spring Festival, tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance have ignited a new round of AI application wars. Alibaba's "Spring Festival Treat Plan" invested 30 billion yuan, covering scenarios like e-commerce, entertainment, and local services. Orders for free milk tea surpassed 10 million within 9 hours of launch, demonstrating strong user appeal. Tencent preemptively deployed its "Yuanbao" AI red packet feature, deeply integrated with the WeChat social ecosystem, investing 10 billion yuan to strengthen user stickiness.

ByteDance participated in different forms. Recently, ByteDance's Jimeng platform officially launched the new-generation video generation model Seedance 2.0. Users only need to describe a plot to generate a shot sequence with directorial thinking. Seedance 2.0 increased the inference availability rate for 15-second short videos to over 90%, far exceeding the industry average of 20%, significantly reducing redundant costs.

This battle appears to be about splashing cash and attracting users, but at its core, it's a comprehensive contest of AI technology implementation capabilities and ecosystem integration capabilities. The Spring Festival has become the best testing ground for giants to compete for user mindshare, cultivate AI usage habits, collect data, and optimize product experiences. Currently, they are all using subsidies, red packets, and traffic to attract users, vying for the "Ask AI First" gateway habit. The giants' strategies are not only about traffic and ecosystems but also affect investment opportunities upstream and downstream.

Which company do you think will become the "super gateway" of the AI era?