Chinas tech titans are giving away money and cars in The Lunar New Year AI War
Summary
Chinese AI companies are splashing out cash and high-value prizes during Lunar New Year to drive adoption of their AI models, with ByteDance, Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba handing out millions in digital red envelopes, vouchers and even cars. ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0 for professional video production while Zhipu AI rolled out GLM-5 and MiniMax released M2.5, and DeepSeek and Alibaba are expected to announce next-generation models. The aggressive promotions overloaded services (Alibaba added resources after Qwen outages) and analysts warn firms are racing to lock in users and developer ecosystems before rivals dominate amid unclear paths to profitability. Beijing is also pushing faster large-scale commercial application of AI, signalling government coordination alongside the industry push.
