How China is turning AI credits into Singles’ Day’s newest staple

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China is turning AI credits

The livestream breakthrough

On the evening of November 2, 2026, top livestreamer Li Jiaqi (China’s “Lipstick King”) teamed up with Chen Yusen, vice president of Alibaba Group and CEO of QwenWork. In just 30 minutes, they sold nearly 100,000 monthly memberships for Alibaba’s QwenWork office AI service. This equated to 2 trillion tokens. While a membership was normally listed at 28 yuan, they offered it for just 0.01 yuan.

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Viewers flooded the chat with the familiar countdown “3-2-1, drop the tokens!” with records set for the invisible product. Li was selling AI products for the first time. Chen noted during the stream that AI could handle routine tasks so users might spend more time with their families. So the combination of extremely low prices with celebrity promotion has enabled involving thousands of new consumers in token buying.

From niche tool to retail staple

Tokens measure the amount of text an AI model processes and generates. Previously, they were largely invisible to ordinary consumers, who were unfamiliar with developer APIs or enterprise contracts. However, Singles' Day marks the first time major platforms have positioned tokens as a distinct consumer product category. Alibaba’s Tmall opened an AI Token Center with packages from Alibaba Cloud, MiniMax, Moonshot AI, Z.AI, and others. JD.com offered services from DeepSeek, Z.AI, and ByteDance’s Volcano Engine.

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Experts described the goal of the initiative as making “topping up computing power as simple as topping up a phone plan.” The domestic demand also shows a clear positive trend. China’s daily average token call volume has grown more than 5,000-fold since 2024. The recent success makes it more likely that the explosive expansion will continue in the following months.

Surging demand and platform strategies

Sales of AI token plans on Alibaba platforms rose 450 percent from October 1 to October 20 compared with the previous month. After Zhipu opened a flagship store on Tmall, brand searches increased 50 times within 48 hours. Subscription sales rose by 160 percent month-on-month. AI-enabled laptops showed growth of 300 percent year-on-year, so all indicators confirm the rapid adoption of this new technology.

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“Chinese consumers are now very accustomed to using AI productivity tools,” said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at research firm Omdia. “Frequent users can run short of credits, which makes extensive purchases during a sales period a very reasonable action.”

Platforms tend to offer longer expiry windows that encourage stockpiling. They also try to educate the target audience through livestream demonstrations of data analysis and presentation generation.

Challenges for sustainable monetization

Commercial companies traditionally aim for profit maximization, but there are different opinions on the long-term implications of their new strategy. High discounts promote volume and user acquisition, but some consumers may expect almost free access. Su stated that “rapid changes in AI products may make consumers wary of prepaying for services at risk of being replaced or retired.”

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Conversion from promotional memberships to full-price offerings is the major test. Competition among model providers is intense, and margins on pure compute credits may be insufficient considering the existing costs. Platforms should balance short-term sales with monetization that will target different consumer groups, including the most price-sensitive one.

Global implications: Can this model travel?

China’s experiment may affect business strategies around the globe. Western markets already sell AI access through monthly subscriptions (ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Microsoft Copilot), but they do not present tokens as discrete retail goods that may be sold via mass-market livestreams. Telecom operators, banks, and retailers in other countries may start experimenting with AI credits more actively when focusing on loyalty rewards or add-on services.

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At the same time, China’s competitive e-commerce platforms, livestream commerce, and government support of AI industrialization create a unique environment that cannot be recreated elsewhere. So maintaining sustained consumer willingness to pay without huge discounts and the global spread of this model are subject to debate. In any case, Singles’ Day has proven that new marketing and revenue-generating opportunities have emerged, and some companies will probably strengthen their competitive advantages on that basis.

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