Jack Ma-Backed Ant Makes Inroads on AI to Pave Tech Growth

(Bloomberg) — Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. rolled out a package of artificial intelligence services, as the company seeks new avenues of growth following a multiyear government crackdown.

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The fintech company said it will start offering an AI “life assistant” app called Zhixiaobao, which can help people order meals, hail taxis, book tickets and access other functions in Ant’s mobile payments service Alipay, which has 1 billion users. The new mobile app was introduced at the Inclusion Conference on the Bund in Shanghai on Thursday.

More than three years ago, Chinese authorities abruptly halted Ant’s initial public offering, which would have been the world’s largest, and forced the company to overhaul its business model to comply with financial regulations. The Hangzhou-based company has restructured its units, and its profit fell 10% in the March 2024 quarter. Ant is now counting on breakthroughs in tech and AI to salvage it from a regulatory clampdown that dented profit growth and limited its online lending activities.

How Ant performs in those fields will affect investors’ perception of its growth prospects, and determine whether the company can still be regarded as more more “tech” than “fin” — after the government signaled intentions to regulate it similarly to a bank.

Last year, Ant repurchased some of its shares from investors at prices that implied a $78.5 billion company valuation, or more than 70% lower than the $280 billion that it would have been worth had its 2020 IPO been successful.

The company has been expanding its overseas operations to offset slowing growth at home. In March this year, it set up independent boards for its international, database and digital technologies units to pave the way for future spinoffs.

Ant on Thursday also introduced three other AI-driven platforms. One lets merchants create customized AI service agents on Alipay, another helps insurance companies answer customer queries in real time, and the third platform is a health-care manager that connects users to services that include doctor and hospital recommendations.

Zhixiaobao and the new platforms are powered by Ant’s large language model BaiLing, which won approval from the government last year to provide services to the public. Ant will rebrand its financial advisory AI service, which was introduced last year as Zhixiaobao, under another name.