Observed Signal · Feb 13, 2026 · Promotional Campaign · Source: CNBC Technology · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Tech Giants Battle for Users with Lunar New Year Giveaways
China’s leading tech companies staged an aggressive user-acquisition push around the 2026 Lunar New Year to promote their AI models, offering cash, digital red envelopes, luxury cars and other prizes. ByteDance distributed 100,000 prizes during a national gala to promote its Doubao model; Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba ran larger red‑envelope promotions tied to Ernie, Yuanbao and Qwen. Reported promotional budgets included CNY500 million for Baidu, CNY1 billion for Tencent and CNY3 billion for Alibaba, and Alibaba experienced outages on its Qwen app during the campaign. Several Chinese and Shanghai-based AI firms also released or upgraded models (ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0, Zhipu AI’s GLM-5, MiniMax M2.5). Analysts and Beijing officials framed the surge as a strategic moment to capture AI users and accelerate commercial AI adoption amid unclear paths to profitability.
Major Chinese platforms are spending hundreds of millions to rapidly acquire AI users and promote foundation models; this can accelerate model adoption, surface scalability and reliability issues (app outages), and reshape competitive dynamics in the global AI and consumer engagement landscape.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- ByteDance distributed 100,000 prizes during China’s main holiday TV gala to promote its Doubao AI model, including luxury cars and cash red packets.
- Baidu allocated CNY500 million to promote its Ernie chatbot; Tencent allocated CNY1 billion for its Yuanbao model; Alibaba committed CNY3 billion to promote Qwen.
- Alibaba reported outages on its Qwen app and said it had to "urgently add resources" to end the service interruptions during the promotional surge.
- ByteDance officially unveiled Seedance 2.0, a video generation model aimed at professional film production.
- Startup Zhipu AI (Z.ai) rolled out a new model GLM-5; Shanghai-based MiniMax released its M2.5 model for public testing.
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