Tencent chairman Ma Huateng told staff at the company’s annual meeting that the firm will use its AI-driven app Yuanbao to stage a 10 billion yuan Spring Festival red‑envelope giveaway, hoping to recreate the viral boost that WeChat enjoyed a decade ago.
Ma said the campaign, beginning February 1, will distribute cash packets on the Yuanbao app with individual envelopes worth as much as 10,000 yuan. He also revealed that Yuanbao plans to roll out a social product called “Yuanbao Pai,” a project he said had been kept secret until now.
The move explicitly echoes WeChat Pay’s 2015 spring gala stunt, when Tencent used a “Shake” mechanic to hand out hundreds of millions of yuan in red envelopes and rapidly folded hundreds of millions of users into its payments ecosystem. That episode is widely credited with accelerating the take‑up of mobile payments in China and cementing WeChat’s role as a daily utility.
For Tencent, the Yuanbao giveaway is both a marketing gambit and a strategic reset. The company is attempting to steer attention and transaction flows to a new, AI‑centric product at a moment when user growth has slowed and rivals from e‑commerce and short‑video platforms are intensifying competition for payments and time spent.
The campaign also raises questions about acquisition economics and regulatory sensitivity. Large cash incentives have been a proven tactic for building network effects, but they are expensive, invite scrutiny from regulators wary of disorderly competition, and offer an uncertain path to sustainable revenue if consumer habits do not stick.
For an international audience, the episode signals how Chinese tech giants are deploying big public subsidies and platform mechanics to accelerate adoption of AI apps, treating festive cultural rituals as potent instruments for digital conversion. It is a reminder that product virality, not just advanced models, remains central to how large platforms translate AI hype into everyday consumer behaviour.