Alibaba’s Quark Becomes China’s Most Popular AI App, Surpassing ByteDance Rivals
- tech360.tv
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Alibaba Group Holding’s AI assistant app, Quark, has overtaken ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek to become China’s most popular AI app as of March.
Quark reached nearly 150 million monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide, according to data from Aicpb.com. Doubao followed with almost 100 million users, while DeepSeek had around 77 million.
The rankings are based on aggregated data from Apple and Google app stores globally, as well as Chinese Android stores. The figures do not include direct visits to chatbot websites.
Alibaba previously reported that Quark, available on both mobile and desktop platforms, had a total of 200 million users, though it did not break down the numbers by platform.
A separate report by US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in early March ranked Quark as the sixth-most popular AI app globally by MAU. It trailed Baidu’s AI Search, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s AI-enhanced Edge browser.
Quark’s rise follows Alibaba’s transformation of the app from a cloud storage and search tool into what it calls an “AI super assistant app.”
The revamped Quark is powered by Alibaba’s Qwen reasoning models, which are designed to “think” before responding, making them suitable for complex tasks.
The app features a simple search box and supports functions such as academic research, document drafting, image generation, presentations, medical diagnostics, travel planning, and coding.
Quark’s broad AI capabilities reflect a wider trend among Chinese tech firms to develop multifunctional AI apps to stay competitive in a crowded market.
ByteDance has been enhancing Doubao with features like internet search, text and image generation, and code writing. The company is also testing video-generation capabilities.
Tencent Holdings has upgraded its Yuanbao chatbot with a gallery of AI agents and integrated it into WeChat, one of China’s most widely used apps.
Quark reached nearly 150 million monthly active users, topping Chinese AI app rankings
ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek followed with 100 million and 77 million users, respectively
Quark is powered by Alibaba’s Qwen reasoning models for complex task handling
Source: SCMP