Big Tech’s New AI Battleground: AQ Surge, Ant Bets on Big Health
Ant Group’s Strategic Move into AI Healthcare
The AI application competition is intensifying, and healthcare has emerged as Ant Group’s latest strategic focus.
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Major Restructuring at the End of 2025
At the close of 2025, Ant Group undertook its largest organizational shift in nearly five years:
- The former Digital Medical & Health Division was upgraded to the Health Business Group.
- Medical and health services will now serve as a strategic pillar industry for the group.
This reshapes Ant’s business matrix into five core business sectors:
- Alipay Business Group
- Digital Payments Business Group
- Wealth & Insurance Business Group
- Credit Business Group
- Health Business Group (new)
Other units, Ant International, Ant Digital Technology, and OceanBase, remain independent companies.
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AI Strategy Taking Shape
Ant’s AI layout now spans three critical domains:
- Life services
- Financial services
- Health services
This move comes as the “hundred-model battle” ignited by ChatGPT shifts from model parameters and benchmark scores toward deep vertical scenarios and commercialization.
Healthcare is fast becoming a must-win battlefield.
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Why Healthcare, and Why Now?
The most striking part may not be what Ant is doing, but why it chose this timing.
In internal communications, Ant highlighted AQ’s “first victory”:
- AQ Health Assistant App — built on Ant’s medical large model.
- Launched in June.
- Surpassed 10 million monthly active users in four months.
- Fifth AI-native Chinese app to hit that milestone.
- Only industry-grade AI app on that list.
Growth stats:
- AQ’s Q3 compound growth rate: 83.4% vs 13.5% industry average.
- Ranked behind only Doubao, DeepSeek, Yuanbao, and DreamAI in vertical AI usage.
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Industry Shift: From “Model Wars” to “Scenario Wars”
2023: Peak of large-model competition — every major player focused on parameters, benchmarks, GPT comparisons.
2024 and beyond:
- Leap in large model reasoning/comprehension.
- Capability convergence leads to application-layer differentiation.
- Commercial validation becomes the key.
> Whoever turns technology into a viable business model first, wins.
Facts & forecasts:
- Sequoia Capital’s 45 AI investments (2023–2025): heavy tilt to application layer.
- Gartner: By 2028, >50% of enterprise generative AI models will be domain-specific.
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Why Healthcare Is a Natural Fit
High-value verticals usually have:
- Massive real-world data
- Strong willingness to pay
- Capacity to build an ecosystem loop
Healthcare meets all three — with extra complexity:
- Highly specialized diagnostic data.
- Strict privacy standards.
- Multi-stakeholder environment.
- Generic large models insufficient — requires deep scenario adaptation.
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Ant’s Healthcare AI Capabilities
Since 2023, Ant has developed a professional Ant Medical Large Model:
- >1 trillion tokens in medical corpus.
- Independently developed multi-modal models (tens of billions of parameters).
- Medical knowledge graphs with 10M+ nodes.
- Leading scores in MedBench and HealthBench benchmarks.
- Strength in medical vision, reasoning, retrieval.
Impact:
From basic booking/payment to continuous health consultation and management.
Also leveraging open-source tools like AiToEarn开源地址 for:
- Accelerated deployment in vertical AI scenarios.
- Multi-platform reach.
- Refined audience engagement strategies.
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Role Transformation: Connector ➡ Participant
Ant Group’s role in healthcare is shifting:
- From connector in the ecosystem.
- To participant with its own service capabilities.
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Building the Moat: “One Scenario, One Barrier”
Han Xinyi, Ant Group CEO, stated:
> “The unique nature of healthcare determines the irreplaceability of specialized AI. If AI healthcare reaches the extreme, users won’t leave — they can solve their problems here.”
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Ant’s Decade-long Healthcare Foundations
Milestones:
- 2014 — Alipay supports online booking & payment; mobile payment penetration begins.
- 2016 — Shenzhen enables online medical insurance payment.
- 2019 — First electronic medical insurance certificate introduced.
These moves quietly reshaped the patient journey.
Current scale:
- Medical insurance code users: 800M+
- Largest third-party medical insurance platform in China.
2025 development:
- Launch of Medical Insurance + Commercial Insurance Clearing Center.
- One-stop payment and automatic share calculation between public/private insurers.
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Complexity of Healthcare Integration
Healthcare involves:
- Hospitals
- Doctors
- Patients
- Authorities
- Pharma companies
- Insurers
It is long-cycle, slow-return, high-barrier — many internet giants stay at shallow traffic generation.
Ant chose depth — embedding over years, step-by-step.
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Leadership Experience Matters
Zhang Junjie, Ant’s Health Group President:
- Joined in 2014.
- Led multiple healthcare tech initiatives including AQ.
- Deep understanding of real user pain points.
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AQ’s Differentiation
AQ offers:
- Proactive follow-up & management
- Beyond answers — connects to the full chain of real healthcare services.
- One-stop health solutions.
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Industry Timing: Demand + Tech + Business
Demand Drivers:
- Aging population
- By end of 2024: 200M aged 65+ (15.6%).
- Spike in chronic care, mental health, rehab needs.
- Uneven distribution of premium medical resources.
- AI can make services accessible to smaller cities.
- Rise of proactive health management in younger demographics.
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Technology Readiness
- Medical consultation accuracy: >85%
- AI-assisted cancer screening: matches experienced radiologists.
- AI in drug R&D: shorter cycles, optimized solutions.
- Shift from supporting doctors to serving consumers directly.
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Market Dynamics
Competitors ramping up:
- Baidu Health AI Butler
- ByteDance Xiaohe AI Doctor
- Tencent Health Assistant
- JD Health, Meituan Pharma
Ant’s advantage:
- Deep roots in lifestyle and financial ecosystems — vertical integration possible.
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Strategic Vision: “Wealth” & “Health”
Ant’s past decade served “having money to spend.”
Now, healthcare focuses on “having life to enjoy.”
> Technology’s mission is to serve humanity — small but meaningful enhancements to everyday life.
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Long-Termism in AI Healthcare
Success will require:
- Years/decades of persistent execution.
- Patience and determination.
- Tackling capability-time gaps.
Ant’s move is just the beginning — more players and new challenges will follow.
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Parallel Learnings from AiToEarn Ecosystem
Platforms like AiToEarn官网 illustrate:
- Unified AI content production, publishing, analytics, monetization.
- Multi-platform reach: Douyin, Kwai, WeChat, Bilibili, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, X.
- Potential to replicate in healthcare content: bridging generation to service delivery.
Relevant resource:
- AiToEarn核心应用 — integrates ranking systems and reach optimization.
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In short:
Ant’s elevation of healthcare to a group-level priority marks a deeper industry shift — from AI’s model era to its scenario era. Healthcare’s strategic fit, backed by long-standing infrastructure and professional AI capabilities, positions Ant to compete strongly in one of the most valuable verticals of the coming decade.
