China's 'Lipstick King' touts AI tokens in first for Singles' Day festival
The launch is the first time AI token packages have been offered as a significant consumer product category during Singles' Day, the world's largest shopping festival originally held on November 11 each year.
China's renowned "Lipstick King," Li Jiaqi, has pivoted his celebrity status to promote artificial intelligence (AI) during the annual Singles' Day shopping extravaganza. On Monday evening, Li, through a live-streaming partnership with Alibaba Group Holding, introduced AI subscriptions, selling 100,000 monthly packages within 30 minutes, according to Alibaba's data.
This marked the first time generative AI products took center stage during the festival, highlighting Chinese tech firms' broader efforts to market AI to mass consumers.
Li, who gained fame selling makeup on Alibaba's Taobao platform, joined Chen Yusen, Alibaba's Vice President and CEO of QwenWork, to explain AI tokens to viewers. Chen described tokens as the computational units powering AI, analogous to fuel for cars or electricity for household appliances. Li and Chen demonstrated AI agents' practical uses, such as drafting documents and generating slide decks.
Viewers quickly purchased Alibaba's Qwen Office monthly subscriptions, initially priced at 28 yuan ($4.21), which were discounted to just 0.01 yuan, acquiring 2 trillion tokens within 30 minutes.
This segment was part of Alibaba's broader technology push during this year's Singles' Day, the multi-week shopping festival ending on November 11. Li also showcased Qwen-related AI-powered hardware, including laptops, voice recorders, and desktop robots, aimed at both office and personal use. As Chinese tech giants and AI developers seek to monetize their investments, AI is increasingly being positioned as a daily utility for the general public.
Alibaba's Tmall launched AI tokens as a dedicated consumer category for the festival, enabling users to purchase computing credits similarly to topping up a mobile phone plan. Over six AI developers, including Alibaba Cloud, Z.ai, Moonshot AI, DeepSeek, and MiniMax, have joined Tmall's token marketplace. China reported over 700 million generative AI users in the first half of the year, accounting for more than half of the nation's population, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Centre.
Written by urgent.news from SCMP Business's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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