Qwen
Alibaba's AI assistant for answers and office work that also orders food and books hotels
First principle
People want more than answers: they want the thing done. Qwen wires Taobao, Alipay, Fliggy and Amap into the chat, so asking, ordering and paying happen without switching apps.
The needs it meets
- Getting things doneCore
- Getting a task done with less time and effort.
- Knowing
- Finding things out, understanding, keeping up with the world.
Why it wins
- Alibaba plugged Taobao, its instant delivery service, Alipay, Fliggy and Amap into one chat box, so a sentence orders food, buys goods or books a flight and hotel: a full set of services and payment no rival assistant can assemble.
- It runs on Alibaba's own Qwen models, and its work assistant hands back finished slides, documents and spreadsheets rather than a block of text.
- At the 2026 Spring Festival Qwen spent 3 billion yuan on free orders; milk tea orders reached 10 million within nine hours, and plenty of people first opened the app for a free cup.
What keeps it ahead
- Ecosystem
- Preinstalled, or tied to an account or a bigger platform.
- Better product
- Clearly better at the core thing.
- Paid growth
- Heavy ad spending to buy users, paid back by those who pay.
How it makes money
Serves a bigger businessSubscriptions
Everyday use is free and since August 2026 a paid membership buys more office assistant quota; the bigger payoff is Alibaba's, since orders placed in the chat flow to Taobao, instant delivery, Fliggy and Alipay.
What a small team can take from it
Qwen's edge is Alibaba's businesses, which no small team has. What carries over is the direction: people want the task finished, not just answered, so wire in the last step, the order, the submission or the send, even if it reaches only one service.
This week
- China: top free apps, number 4
updated 29 October 2026
- Developer
- Shanghai Zhixin Puhui Technology Co., Ltd.
- Category
- App · Productivity
- Stores
- App Store
- First in a list
- 29 October 2026
Sources
- Alibaba Turns Qwen From Chatbot to AI Task Performer Across Its Ecosystem 15 January 2026
- Alibaba’s Qwen app links Taobao, Alipay in end-to-end AI shopping push 16 January 2026
- 千问官宣：免单卡延长至2月28日，除了奶茶，还可买早餐、中餐、年货！ 7 February 2026
- 千问 App 上线办公付费会员，与千问办公“打擂台”？ 10 August 2026
This is our analysis and judgement, drafted by an AI agent from the store pages and public sources and read by a person before it went up. Every figure has a source; where there is none, we give no figure. Found a mistake? Write to [email protected].