The AI Super App Race: Jack Ma's Strategic Vision in the New Era

The mobile internet era saw as many as 10 Chinese apps achieve over 500 million monthly active users (MAU), yet the artificial intelligence era will likely witness only 3-4 super apps reaching this milestone. In this emerging competitive landscape, Jack Ma’s strategic positioning represents one of the most compelling approaches to winning this transformative battle. By reimagining how businesses harness AI integration, Alibaba’s founder has crafted a vision that extends far beyond traditional platform competition—it represents a fundamental shift in how companies create value in an intelligence-driven economy.

Why Jack Ma’s Alibaba Stands Out in the AI Competition

While many entrepreneurs are experimenting with artificial intelligence capabilities, Jack Ma has orchestrated a comprehensive strategic framework that distinguishes Alibaba’s approach from competitors. At an age when many business leaders contemplate retirement, jack ma has demonstrated remarkable learning agility and execution capability. His recent moves showcase calculated foresight: with Qwen in one hand (Alibaba’s large language model), Afu on the other (health-focused AI assistant), and Alibaba Cloud in the center, the architecture of his AI strategy becomes evident.

What particularly demonstrates jack ma’s strategic insight is the acquisition of Haodf.com, a leading online healthcare platform. Completed approximately eighteen months before current developments, this acquisition—priced around 2 billion yuan—was pursued decisively despite competing suitors including Baidu and Tencent holding first refusal rights. At that time, many observers viewed this as a peripheral investment. Today, the same platform is valued at considerably higher multiples, potentially exceeding 10 billion yuan. This transaction exemplifies jack ma’s ability to identify foundational assets that unlock future competitive advantages.

The Transformation of Super Apps from Mobile to AI Era

The structural shift from the mobile internet era to the artificial intelligence era fundamentally alters the landscape of platform competition. During the mobile era, approximately 15 Chinese applications maintained over 100 million daily active users (DAU), with 10 exceeding 500 million MAU. This abundance of large-scale platforms will consolidate dramatically. The projected 3-4 super apps dominating the AI era will command proportionally greater user engagement—500 million MAU will translate to roughly 350 million DAU—with valuations several multiples higher than their mobile-era equivalents.

This consolidation reflects the increasing importance of large language model capabilities and progression toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). To maintain user stickiness in the AI era, super app operators must continuously advance their underlying AI technology. This technological imperative creates a natural moat: companies with superior large models will inevitably lead in user adoption, and their dominance will extend across adjacent markets—whether robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other AI-dependent sectors.

Qwen vs Doubao: The Intensifying Battle Between Alibaba and ByteDance

The most direct competitive clash will emerge between Alibaba’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, representing the first serious head-to-head competition between jack ma and Zhang Yiming in the AI era—two entrepreneurs now operating from strategic leadership positions rather than day-to-day operations.

Jack Ma’s differentiation strategy centers on actionability. Unlike purely conversational or search-oriented AI assistants, Qwen is positioning itself as the first application genuinely capable of completing tasks. Local services and instant retail—Alibaba’s aggressive expansion into community-based commerce—serve as the foundational infrastructure and core differentiator. By integrating commerce capability with AI reasoning, Qwen transcends the traditional Q&A and search paradigm to become a do-it-all platform.

ByteDance’s recent moves—including development of the Doubao phone and reported automotive partnerships with manufacturers like Seres—demonstrate parallel expansion into the physical and autonomous sectors. Yet Qwen possesses an integrated advantage: jack ma has deliberately woven together Alibaba’s consumer commerce platform, Ant Group’s financial infrastructure, and Alibaba Cloud’s computational backbone into a unified AI strategy. This interconnectedness means Qwen can leverage existing user relationships and transaction histories in ways standalone competitors cannot easily replicate.

The Crowded Middle: Contenders Facing Difficult Choices

Beyond the emerging Alibaba-ByteDance duopoly, a secondary tier of competitors possesses the financial resources and user bases to enter the super app race. Tencent, Meituan, Pinduoduo, JD.com, and Baidu have all begun exploring AI-native platform strategies. However, only companies commanding over 20 billion yuan in cash reserves and demonstrating commitment to an all-in strategy can credibly execute this competitive vision.

Meituan’s strategic decisions illustrate these pressures acutely. The company’s withdrawal from community group buying was not merely a loss-mitigation exercise—it represented a conscious reallocation of resources toward AI era positioning. Similarly, Pinduoduo must navigate the tension between international e-commerce expansion and the intensifying domestic super app competition. Whoever among these challengers successfully launches a credible AI-native application first may capture substantial stock market momentum, with valuations rebounding 20% or greater from current levels.

For Baidu, the competitive window grows narrower. The company that once dominated AI research in China has ceded significant user perception advantages to more consumer-focused competitors. Xiaohongshu, despite recent attention and growth, faces structural obsolescence in an AI world. As AI systems develop the capability to generate real-time video content with practical advice, the specific value proposition of Xiaohongshu as a lifestyle discovery platform diminishes substantially. It risks becoming merely another content-sharing network rather than a destination for actionable information.

Tencent’s Entrenched Position and Huawei’s Different Path

Tencent remains perhaps the most resilient Chinese technology company, boasting textbook-quality products like WeChat Mini Programs and Video Channels. As the dominant mobile-era super app operator through WeChat, Tencent will certainly maintain a position in the AI era—but its dominance is no longer guaranteed.

The emerging competitive dynamic between Douyin and WeChat offers a revealing case study. While Douyin has captured increasing consumption of user attention, the competitive impact on WeChat has thus far remained limited due to their complementary functions. However, if Doubao’s daily active users were to surpass WeChat—replicating Douyin’s trajectory but with greater strategic consequence—the implications would be profound. The shift would represent not merely time displacement but a potential reconfiguration of how users interact with their primary digital interface. This outcome, while uncertain, is no longer unimaginable and may emerge within a relatively compressed timeframe.

Huawei, conversely, is following a distinctly different competitive path. The company possesses neither the strategic interest nor organizational DNA to compete in the super app arena. Instead, Huawei is positioning itself as China’s integrated technology backbone—combining semiconductor design capability, AI computing infrastructure, enterprise software, and automotive systems integration. The Huawei automotive alliance, which has expanded from initial partnerships with Seres through Chery and increasingly toward larger state-owned manufacturers like Dongfeng, FAW, Chang’an, and GAC, represents a strategic vision of comparable ambition but entirely different competitive vectors.

The Winner-Take-Most Dynamics of the AI Super App Era

As the AI era unfolds, the convergence of superior large language models, user scale, integrated services, and capital resources will likely produce the 3-4 dominant super apps. Jack Ma’s orchestration of Alibaba’s resources reveals an understanding that value in the AI era accrues to platforms that solve real consumer problems—not merely those with the best conversational AI. Qwen’s strategic advantage rests not on linguistic capability alone but on the ability to execute commerce, healthcare, information, and logistics through unified AI coordination.

The companies that emerge victorious will be those where entrepreneurial vision, financial commitment, and technological capability align across all dimensions. This convergence is neither inevitable nor predetermined—but the competitive intensity will intensify dramatically in coming months as each contender recognizes the stakes. A 1 trillion yuan revenue market awaits the ultimate winners, which is precisely why jack ma’s strategic positioning, combined with Zhang Yiming’s execution capability and Tencent’s embedded user relationships, will determine the ultimate competitive outcome in China’s AI-native ecosystem.