The 2026 Spring Festival has transcended its traditional role as a mere consumer spectacle and has now become a high-stakes arena where Chinese AI giants compete fiercely for a pivotal entry point. With the CCTV Spring Festival Gala transforming into a national showcase for AI technology, this unprecedented wave of flagship model releases is reshaping the competitive dynamics of the AI industry.

Recently, China's internet and AI sectors have witnessed an unprecedented surge in flagship model launches. This is no longer a solo performance by a single model but a high-stakes race to swiftly convert 'technological advancements' into 'consumer-friendly blockbusters.' On the stage of this AI Spring Festival Gala, how will the key players strategize? Who will emerge as the biggest surprise winner?

01 The AI Spring Festival Gala Showdown: Four Titans, Four Strategies

1. ByteDance: Spring Festival Traffic Peak Ambush

As the exclusive AI cloud partner for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, ByteDance unveiled its 'Three-Model Package': Seedance 2.0 (video), Seedream 5.0 (image), and Doubao 2.0. Among them, Seedance 2.0 has already demonstrated 'blockbuster' potential, supporting the generation of multi-angle, cinema-quality videos with native audio from text or image inputs within 60 seconds.

On New Year's Eve, Doubao will distribute over 100,000 tech gifts and cash red envelopes to audiences nationwide, including access to the Doubao large model, along with prizes such as Unitree robots, DJI drones, Bambu 3D printers, and usage rights for SAIC Audi and Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles. These prizes are not mere 'hardware sponsorships' but are deeply integrated with Volcano Engine and the Doubao large model, extending AI capabilities from online interactions to offline, tangible tech experiences.

2. Alibaba: A 3 Billion Ecosystem Bonanza to Shake Up the Game

Alibaba's Qianwen invested 3 billion yuan to launch the 'Spring Festival Treat Plan,' fueling user growth with 25 yuan no-threshold milk tea delivery cards, distributing over 1 million orders within three hours of launch. By integrating with Alibaba's ecosystem businesses—including Taobao Flash Sales, Fliggy, Damai, Hema, Tmall Supermarket, and Alipay—Qianwen transformed the AI assistant from a 'conversational tool' into a 'life services orchestrator.'

More critically, Alibaba plans to unveil the next-generation flagship model Qwen 3.5 in mid-February. According to technical documents, Qwen 3.5 employs a hybrid attention mechanism with native visual understanding, enabling direct parsing of image and video content for cross-modal intelligent interactions.

3. Tencent: 1 Billion in Red Envelopes + Social Virality to Capture Minds

Tencent Yuanbao invested 1 billion yuan in cash red envelopes, with individual prizes up to 10,000 yuan and 100 limited-edition '10,000 Yuan Pony Cards.' Leveraging the WeChat ecosystem, Yuanbao soared to the top of the iOS free app charts on its launch day with the classic combination of 'AI tasks + cash red envelopes + social virality.'

Tencent also tested the 'Yuanbao Party' group chat feature, where mentioning @Yuanbao in groups enables AI operations like chat summarization and image processing, deeply embedding AI into familiar social interactions. However, notably, on February 4, WeChat officially blocked Yuanbao's marketing links, showing no leniency for its core AI product and underscoring platform governance fairness.

4. Baidu: 500 Million in Red Envelopes + Scenario-Based Deep Dive

Baidu's Wenxin Assistant invested 500 million yuan in cash red envelopes, with single prizes up to 6,666 yuan. As the 'Chief AI Partner' for the Beijing Radio and Television Station Spring Festival Gala, Baidu seamlessly integrated Wenxin Assistant's AI functions with gala interactions, allowing viewers to claim AI red envelopes while watching.

Wenxin Assistant abandoned pure 'traffic acquisition' tactics and instead focused on high-frequency, essential demand scenarios like education and health. For example, it offered creative vocabulary learning and homework correction for education, as well as winter skin disease identification and flu medication queries for health, precisely addressing core family needs during the Spring Festival.

02 Wave of Technological Upgrades: Doubled Parameters, Efficiency Revolution

The Spring Festival season is not just a marketing battle but also a concentrated showcase of technological prowess. Zhipu released GLM-5 on February 11, expanding its parameter scale from 355 billion to 744 billion and increasing pre-training data from 23TB to 28.5TB. The model integrates DeepSeek Sparse Attention for the first time, significantly reducing deployment costs while maintaining long-text performance.

DeepSeek is rumored to launch its V4 version in mid-February, focusing on improvements in coding and ultra-long prompt processing. On February 11, reports emerged that DeepSeek updated its new model to support context lengths of up to 1 million tokens. MiniMax also launched its latest large model, M2.5, on its Agent platform on the same day.

JPMorgan analysts highlighted that DeepSeek's technique of adding 'conditional memory' beyond Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models could become pivotal for next-generation models. This doesn't just make models lighter but shifts expensive dense computations to cheaper retrieval operations.

03 Capital Market Reaction: AI Concept Stocks Surge

This AI Spring Festival Gala has already stirred waves in the capital market. On February 12, Zhipu's stock price surged over 40% intraday, reaching a high of 443 HKD, with cumulative weekly gains exceeding 90%. MiniMax's Hong Kong-listed shares also rose over 10%, while A-share AI application stocks like ChineseAll, Zhangyue Technology, and Shanghai Film saw multiple limit-ups.

The Huawei Artificial Intelligence ETF (159381) rose over 3.7% in the afternoon, the Huawei Cloud Computing ETF (516630) gained 2.22%, and the Huawei Communications ETF (515050) increased by 1.74%. Concepts like compute leasing, optical module CPO, and liquid-cooled servers led market gains, with Capital Online hitting a 20cm limit-up, and stocks like TCZ, TFC, and Xiechuang Data surging over 10%.

JPMorgan maintained an 'Overweight' rating on pure model developers Zhipu and MiniMax, setting a target price of 400 HKD for Zhipu (based on 30x 2030 expected P/E) and 700 HKD for MiniMax (also based on 30x 2030 expected P/E).

Market analysts believe that as model capabilities approach global frontiers, the logic behind valuation upgrades will undergo a qualitative shift: 'Valuation upgrades may no longer hinge so much on national pride but more on economic benefits: stronger willingness to pay, higher API workload retention rates.'

04 Dark Horse Prediction: Platform-Based Enterprises Could Be the Ultimate Winners

Despite capital market enthusiasm, current '2C agent' demos often look promising but frequently face inconsistencies in real-world deployment.

This Spring Festival's large-scale user testing will serve as a true litmus test. If the flagship models in this Spring Festival season can truly resolve reliability and latency issues in tool usage, a turning point may indeed arrive.

Who will take the lead in this model war? JPMorgan offers a counterintuitive deduction: the biggest beneficiary may not be model vendors but Tencent. The logic is clear: Tencent owns WeChat and QQ, China's highest-frequency communication interfaces. If DeepSeek V4 achieves inference cost reductions, it will drive AI from standalone apps toward embedding in high-frequency applications like WeChat.

For Alibaba and Baidu, the situation is more complex. On one hand, stronger models enhance their products' user experiences (e.g., Taobao Q&A, Baidu Search); on the other hand, if DeepSeek reignites a 'price war,' API services across the industry will face significant deflationary pressure.

For vertical giants like Ctrip, Beike, and Kuaishou, JPMorgan sees this as decidedly positive. Powerful open-source models lower their technical barriers, enabling them to fine-tune with proprietary data at lower costs and accelerate product iteration.

05 Conclusion: The AI Spring Festival Gala, A New Starting Point for Chinese Technology

The 2026 AI Spring Festival season is not just a marketing battle but a critical turning point for China's AI industry, transitioning from technological exploration to scalable applications. As the red envelope traffic war intensifies, major players rapidly shift their competitive focus to product capabilities. AI assistants are no longer mere 'chat tools' but are extending into full-scenario applications like education, health, creation, and collaboration.

After this battle, the landscape of China's AI sector will solidify into three major hundred-million-user super entry points. The biggest winners may not be single model vendors but platform-based enterprises capable of deeply integrating AI into users' high-frequency life scenarios.

For investors, the Spring Festival's red envelope frenzy will fade, but the commercialization of AI technology is just beginning. Focusing on enterprises that demonstrate strong technological prowess, ecological integration capabilities, and user retention during the Spring Festival war may offer a head start in investing in the AI era.

This Spring Festival, as AI steps out of labs and into household interactions during the Spring Festival Gala, Chinese technology is writing a new chapter. The biggest surprise winner may lie hidden in this comprehensive contest of technology, ecosystems, and user mindshare.

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