Airbnb Selects Chinese AI Agent from Alibaba Over ChatGPT
Vacation rental giant Airbnb has chosen Quark, an AI agent from China's Alibaba Cloud, over solutions from OpenAI and other global competitors. Powered by the Qwen3 large language model, the Quark chatbot provides text and voice features similar to ChatGPT. Alibaba Cloud is the Hangzhou-based AI and cloud services division of the Alibaba Group.
The Race to Build an AI Super-App
This integration highlights Alibaba's ambition to transform Quark into an all-in-one AI super-app for Chinese consumers. The move comes amid fierce competition from other local tech giants pursuing the same goal with their own applications, including ByteDance's Doubao and Tencent's Yuanbao.
Quark's Evolving Capabilities
To stay ahead, Alibaba has been rapidly enhancing Quark's functionality:
- Super Box: Introduced in March, this feature simplifies user interaction with complex AI applications by analyzing queries and generating relevant responses within a single interface.
- Deep Search: Launched in May, this capability uses multiple AI agents to understand complex requests and provide comprehensive reports instead of simple answers.
Hardware and Market Competition
Beyond software, Alibaba is expanding into hardware by opening pre-orders for AI-powered Quark smart glasses that offer real-time speech translation and transcription.
The competition is heating up, with Quark reaching 151 million monthly active users, narrowly edging out ByteDance's Doubao at 150 million. Meanwhile, Tencent is upgrading its Yuanbao app with support for advanced models like DeepSeek.