Not a token effort: beer meets artificial intelligence at bar in China’s capital

A bar in Beijing, China's capital and known as the country's Silicon Valley, is drawing crowds by offering unlimited access to artificial intelligence models. The AGI Bar, situated in the Zhongguancun tech hub, has been a hit among laptop-using patrons since its opening in June last year. After ordering a drink, many customers connect to the bar's free Wi-fi and set up an AI agent to utilize the free tokens provided by the establishment.

Manager Yang Yuan explained that customers can access any AI model for free as long as they order a drink and install a plug-in on their laptop. The bar currently offers more than a dozen drinks, with the AGI beer, its bestseller, costing just 9.9 yuan (approximately US$1.47). Alongside the drinks, the venue runs DeepSeek-V4-Flash locally on two Nvidia DGX Spark computers, enabling customers to engage with the model at no cost.

While Yang did not disclose the exact number of tokens consumed by the bar monthly, the costs are reportedly covered by the bar's owner. The bar's name, AGI, stands for artificial general intelligence, a theoretical development where AI matches or surpasses human capabilities. The walls of the bar are adorned with logos and merchandise from prominent Chinese AI companies, including Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings, which owns the South China Morning Post.

The AGI Bar has become a hub for developers and AI enthusiasts, located near several leading AI companies, such as Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, as well as Tsinghua and Peking universities. Regular events, ranging from vibe-coding meet-ups to offline sessions hosted by AI professionals, have given the bar a significance that extends beyond a typical bar.

Yang emphasized that since the introduction of the free token offer, many AI enthusiasts and industry professionals have frequented the bar specifically for this reason. A March posting on the Dazhong Dianping restaurant review site described the bar as having "futuristic vibes" and noted that it is "a prime example of the fusion of beverages and AI."