Alibaba Pours $431 Million into Lunar New Year AI Push Amid Chatbot War

• Alibaba pledges 3 billion yuan ($431 million) for its Qwen AI app during Lunar New Year, tripling rivals' spending.
• The campaign, starting February 6, offers incentives for dining, entertainment, and leisure with 'large red envelopes'.
• Tencent and Baidu previously announced 1 billion yuan and 500 million yuan respectively for their AI chatbot promotions.
• Chinese tech firms traditionally use the Lunar New Year for marketing to acquire new users, as seen with WeChat Pay in 2015.
• Competition in China's AI sector intensified after DeepSeek's R1 model launch, with DeepSeek V4 expected mid-February.

Why It Matters: Alibaba commits $431 million to its AI app for Lunar New Year, intensifying China's chatbot market competition.