The $3 Billion Mistake: Why Alibaba’s AI App Just Turned to Paid Features
Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen spent $3 billion on marketing to become the default AI assistant, only to see users vanish when the freebies ended. Now it’s pivoting to paid subscriptions—not because it’s confident, but because an internal rival (Tongyi Office) has already absorbed the company’s best AI assets. This is a survival story, not a growth story.