A dozen actors perform a traditional lion dance in front of Todtown shopping mall ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year in Shanghai, China, on Feb. 13, 2026, during the opening of the Xinzhuang Lantern Festival.
The Year of the Horse kicks off this weekend, and China's artificial intelligence companies are splashing out the cash in what is being called "The Lunar New Year AI War."
To land prime placement for its Doubao AI model, TikTok owner ByteDance is handing out 100,000 prizes during the country's main holiday TV gala, including luxury cars. It is giving away money packets, too, with some an auspicious CNY8,888, about $1,280.
Baidu , Tencent and Alibaba are offering even bigger digital red envelopes, with some as high as CNY10,000, about $1,450, as well as vouchers, gadgets, and other freebies.
Baidu has allocated CNY500 million, about $72 million, to promote its Ernie chatbot. Tencent doubled that at CNY1 billion, about $145 million, for its Yuanbao model. Alibaba is spending a whopping CNY3 billion, about $434 million, to get users to try out Qwen.
The giveaways have created such a commotion that Alibaba admitted it had to "urgently add resources" to end outages on its Qwen app.
Analysts say companies see this moment as key to grab AI-curious customers for their own survival.
"They are in a high-stakes race to capture users and build developer ecosystems before rivals lock in market dominance," Charlie Dai, principal analyst at research group Forrester, told CNBC. "The issue is that profitability and sustainable business models remain unclear, for every major player in the global market."