ByteDance, other major Chinese tech firms dominate local consumer AI market: report

ByteDance-owned Doubao remained mainland China’s top consumer artificial intelligence app in December, according to a report, as the country’s Big Tech companies continued to outpace emerging start-ups in this market.

Doubao, a ChatGPT-like app, had 155 million weekly active users in the second week of December, according to data released on Tuesday by business intelligence service provider QuestMobile. It said that number was nearly double the 81.56 million total recorded by DeepSeek’s eponymous chatbot, which stayed as the market’s No 2 player, in the same period.

Tencent Holdings’ Yuanbao AI assistant, Ant Group’s Ant A-Fu and Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen app were ranked No 3, 4 and 5, respectively, by QuestMobile in the second week of December.

Ant Group is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post. Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud computing services unit of Hangzhou-based e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Moonshot AI’s Kimi assistant and Zuoyebang’s Kuaidui app secured the No 7 and No 8 spots on QuestMobile’s latest ranking.