Wang Xing talks about AI for the first time: Meituan’s strategy is offense rather than defense, and it will launch an AI life assistant this year｜Titanium Media AGI

Written by

Audrey Miles

Updated on:July-10th-2025

Meituan founder and CEO Wang Xing disclosed his AI strategy to the public for the first time.

On March 22, Meituan (03690.HK) released its fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2024 on the evening of the 21st.

The financial report shows that in the fourth quarter, Meituan’s revenue was 88.487 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.1%; the adjusted net profit was 9.848 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 125%.

In 2024, Meituan's total revenue was 337.592 billion yuan, an increase of 22.0% from 276.7 billion yuan in 2023; net profit (net profit for the year) was 35.80 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 158.4%; measured in accordance with non-International Financial Reporting Accounting Standards, the adjusted net profit (net profit) was 43.772 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 88.2%.

It is worth noting that during the earnings call, Meituan CEO Wang Xing talked about AI strategy, competition and other information for the first time.

Wang Xing said that he is very concerned about AI, and Meituan's strategy for AI is offense, not defense. "We will use everything we have to try to attack and take the initiative to achieve our leading position in AI."

"Something as fundamentally revolutionary as AI could bring about all kinds of possibilities, and I think the only strategy that makes sense is to take the initiative. Because AI changes so fast, it will change, disrupt or transform every industry, which makes everyone excited. But I think in a sense, everyone is also afraid of what AI will bring. But I think we are in a very advantageous position in this regard because we are a technology company that connects offline businesses with the online world. In the AI era, we will continue to play such a connector role and realize the connection between the digital world and the physical world. This is our strength. I will elaborate on this in more detail." Wang Xing said.

It is worth noting that Wang Xing revealed that Meituan is developing a new AI native product, and it is expected to launch an AI assistant covering all Meituan services within this year, so that everyone can have a free life secretary.

Meituan has implemented three AI layers and has invested billions of yuan in GPU chips

Wang Xing pointed out that Meituan’s AI strategy is built on three levels:

“First, AI at work. We need to apply AI to the work of all employees and our operations, greatly improving the work efficiency and experience of 100,000 employees;
Second, AI in products. We will use AI to transform our existing 2B and 2C products and services, and will also create new AI native products to better serve customers and partners such as consumers, merchants and riders, and further consolidate our competitive advantage;
Third, Building LLM (Large Language Model). We will continue to actively invest in Capex (capital expenditure) to improve our self-developed base model capabilities. ”

Wang Xing revealed that to date, Meituan has made certain progress in AI infrastructure, model training and applications, including the launch of an AI life secretary-type assistant product this year, and will further accelerate the pace of exploration.

1. In terms of improving internal work efficiency, Wang Xing said that Meituan has built a self-developed large model LongCat (Longmao, registered as Tonghui). At the same time, by connecting with other external models, it has built more efficient employee work assistance tools, including AI programming, meeting and document assistants, picture and short video production, sales AI assistants, etc., to improve employee work efficiency and experience.

In the field of customer service, Meituan has established an intelligent customer service agent based on a self-developed large model. The pilot results show that operational efficiency can be improved by 20%, and customer satisfaction has also increased by more than 7.5 percentage points; in the field of sales, Meituan's AI sales assistant, which works with R&D and sales personnel, collected and updated holiday business information of 1.2 million merchants during the Spring Festival, reducing sales workload by 44% and improving the accuracy of the business hours of merchants displayed on the platform during the Spring Festival; in the field of R&D, Meituan has developed an AI Coding tool integrated with IDE and vigorously promoted it among engineers. At present, 27% of the new code has been produced by AI.

2. In terms of external products and services, Wang Xing said that the role of AI in business is, on the one hand, AI optimization of existing products, and on the other hand, the launch of AI native products. In the former, Meituan promotes AI merchant assistants in multiple categories, such as smart store decoration, smart merchant information optimization and display, and smart business management.

On the merchant side, we will promote AI merchant assistants to multiple categories, and provide full-link operational support for merchants through functions such as smart store decoration, smart merchant information optimization and display, and smart business management. It is expected that AI merchant assistants will cover millions of merchants within the year, which can greatly release merchants' online operational energy and improve operational efficiency.

On the user side, we have tried to improve the user experience of searching and ordering on our platform through AI assistant services in some categories. For example, we have launched services such as restaurant assistant, travel assistant, and reservation assistant, which can interact with users through text or voice, and continuously improve the user's convenience.

Wang Xing revealed that Meituan is developing a new AI native product and is expected to launch an AI assistant covering all Meituan services within this year, so that everyone can have a free life secretary.

"Based on our rich offline service supply and efficient instant delivery network, we will be able to intelligently meet users' various personalized needs, including takeout orders and fulfillment and delivery, travel and dining reservations, group voucher purchases and payment, grocery shopping, travel plans, hotel reservations, etc. I believe that Meituan's rich consumption scenarios and offline service supply, as well as strong fulfillment service capabilities, are our unique advantages. Such an AI assistant will not only provide users with information services in the digital world, but will also ultimately meet users' consumption needs and truly achieve the practical application of AI in the physical world," said Wang Xing.

In Wang Xing's view, Meituan has unique advantages in the application of AI in the physical world.

3. In terms of capital expenditure and self-developed large models, Wang Xing revealed that in the past year, Meituan has also attached great importance to the procurement of GPU (graphics processing unit) chips. Adequate supply of GPU resources has always been our top priority, and we will continue to invest billions of yuan in GPU resources.

"Bringing artificial intelligence into the physical world requires not only very smart algorithms or models, but also infrastructure in the physical world. While we invest resources in shareholder returns and new businesses, we continue to invest billions of yuan in GPU resources. Our capital expenditure this year is also considerable, and we will further increase capital investment in this area," said Wang Xing.

Meituan's dual-wheel drive: internal technological innovation + external investment layout

As financial writers Chen Run and Wang Jing wrote in their book "The Biography of Wang Xing: Life Without Limits", entrepreneurship is the product of the combination of technological innovation and venture capital.

Therefore, in the AI era, Meituan will continue to adhere to the "dual-wheel drive": internally develop innovative technologies, while also conducting external venture capital and deploying AI, robotics and other fields to enable business implementation.

Wang Xing said that Meituan's infrastructure team and large-model algorithm team have done a lot of optimization work, efficiently and fully utilizing the relatively restrained computing cluster resources. The comprehensive evaluation of the self-developed large-model LongCat is comparable to the domestic first-tier level. The proportion of calls to the self-developed large-model LongCat API has increased from 10% at the beginning of last year to 68% now, which also indirectly verifies the effectiveness of LongCat.

In addition to self-developed big models, Wang Xing said that Meituan also interacts with other mainstream models in the market, allowing internal product development teams to explore AI products and services more freely.

At the same time, Wang Xing also pointed out that AI will greatly promote the development of the robotics business. "We have always maintained industry-leading technology in the fields of automatic delivery vehicles and drones, and continue to explore the application of artificial intelligence in the field of instant delivery. In addition to self-development, we have also supported the development of some outstanding start-ups in the robotics and unmanned driving industries through strategic investment. We hope to deepen cooperation with these companies at the business level and deepen technical exchanges in the future. In the future, our robotics will form a more organic combination with AI and continue to iterate in the fields of automated delivery."

Meituan's financial report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2024, Meituan's R&D expenses were 5.4 billion yuan, accounting for 6.1% of total revenue, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from the previous quarter, mainly due to the increase in employee salary expenses. In 2024, Meituan's R&D expenses reached 21.053 billion yuan.

Titanium Media AGI learned that Wang Xing is currently in charge of AI-related businesses and projects within Meituan. At the same time, at the investment level, Meituan Strategic Investment and Meituan Dragon Ball are both investing heavily in cutting-edge technologies such as AI and robots.

According to IT Juzi, as of the end of February 2024, Meituan has made 99 strategic investments in more than 70 companies, including 26 investments in the AI field. Meituan's current layout includes AI large-scale model unicorns Zhipu and Dark Side of the Moon, robotics companies Yushu Technology, Mechamind Robotics, Gaoxian Robotics, Flexiv (Feixi), Purdue Technology, AI chip company Aixin Yuanzhi, and the recent AI infra company Silicon Mobility and other projects.

Looking ahead to 2025, Meituan revealed in its financial report that the company will adapt to changes in consumption trends and help the industry change. Meituan will always be committed to promoting the digital transformation of the industry, empowering merchants to operate, and releasing consumer demand. While continuing to implement the "retail + technology" company strategy, Meituan will increase investment in cutting-edge technologies and related applications such as AI, drone delivery, and automatic delivery vehicles . In the long run, Meituan firmly believes that technology will continue to drive changes in the retail industry. The goal is not only to promote industry growth and technological innovation, but also to contribute to the development of the entire society.

Wang Xing emphasized, "Ultimately, our mission has always been to help everyone eat better and live better. We have built a considerable infrastructure in the physical world and achieved digital connectivity. We believe that this infrastructure will be very valuable when we enter the AI era."

"Disruptive innovation is important, but selection and judgment are also important. Entrepreneurship is mainly about what kind of services you provide to what kind of users. This is the core value. As for whether it is original or not, it may not be important. The fact that you have been exposed to many things early does not mean anything, but you have to be able to see the possibilities behind them. This requires being very sensitive and also requires enduring a lot of failures. You need to keep trying, keep failing, and with a little bit of luck, you can succeed." Wang Xing once said.

(This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author: Lin Zhijia)