Establishing a New AI Division and the Rapid Surge of Tabbit: Can Meituan Secure a Seat at the AI Table?
Meituan's Core Local Commerce (CLC) organizational structure has recently been adjusted. A new AI Transformation department has been established, parallel to departments such as food delivery and flash shopping. It is led by Mu Yao, the former general manager of Dianping. The reporting relationship has been changed from Li Shubin, the senior vice president and platform head of Meituan, to Wang Puzhong, the CEO of Meituan's Core Local Commerce.
This is also another major Internet company setting up an AI transformation department after Alibaba established its Token Foundry division. Meituan's AI strategy has also emerged. And entrusting the "top position" to an executive with rich business experience rather than a technical expert also continues Meituan's pragmatic style of prioritizing the integration of AI and business.
In addition, Meituan has recently launched multiple AI products intensively. After 100 days of public beta and more than a dozen updates, Tabbit 1.0, an AI-native browser launched by Meituan's GN06 team, was recently released. The GN06 team was formed by integrating the "Light Years Beyond" team acquired by Meituan for 2.065 billion yuan. This is also the first answer it has presented to the public.
After the food delivery war, Meituan's AI business is starting a "great leap forward."
Meituan's AI Strategy Emerges
With the establishment of the AI Transformation department, the outline of Meituan's AI strategy is taking shape.
Different from the business teams exploring Meituan's self-developed large models and various AI application products, which all report directly to Li Shubin, the head of the Meituan platform and a member of the S-team, the AI Transformation department now reports directly to Wang Puzhong. Meituan's AI has risen from "technical exploration" to the "strategic core." When promoting the implementation of AI solutions, it can more efficiently mobilize the resources of the entire Core Local Commerce system, rather than being restricted by the technical capabilities and decision-making cycles of individual business departments.
The turning point in Meituan's attitude towards the AI business can be traced back to the first-quarter earnings call in 2025. At that time, Meituan CEO Wang Xing said that Meituan's strategic positioning in AI technology is to actively attack rather than passively defend.
Illustration: Meituan's AI organizational structure diagram (compiled by Tech Planet based on public information)
Constrained by the food delivery war, Meituan has allocated its limited "ammunition" to AI infrastructure, with the core being its self-developed large model, Long Cat. Since its first release in September 2025, Meituan's LongCat series of models have released a total of 12 models, covering all modalities such as text, images, voice, and video.
Like other major Internet companies, Meituan quickly made up for its talent shortage by "poaching." At the end of 2025, according to a report in "Intelligent Emergence," Pan Xin, the former partner of Flash AI and the former head of the AI platform for ByteDance's visual large model, joined Meituan. Pan Xin is responsible for multi-modal AI innovation work and led the development of multiple related applications such as the LongCat App.
As the person in charge of the basic model of Meituan's LongCat team, Pei Peng appeared at academic forum events held by multiple universities in 2025. Based on LongCat, Meituan has intensively released products for both the B2B and B2C markets. The former includes products such as "Kangaroo Advisor" and "Intelligent Shopkeeper," while the latter includes independent apps such as the AI life secretary "Xiaomei" and the AI butler "Wen Xiaotuan." Before the "May Day" holiday this year, "Wen Xiaotuan" was promoted to the core position in the bottom navigation bar of the Meituan App.
These are projects independently promoted by various business lines under the Core Local Commerce (CLC) system. From the recruitment requirements posted on Meituan's official website, it can be seen that products like "Xiaotuan" belong to Meituan's Core Local Commerce department. With the establishment of the AI Transformation department, it is very likely that these products will be uniformly planned and coordinated under the new structure in the future.
Illustration: Meituan's independent app life secretary "Xiaomei" (left) and "Wen Xiaotuan" (right)
Behind the launch of another highly anticipated AI product, Tabbit, the AI browser market has become a fiercely competitive red ocean. Not only have overseas giants such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and OpenAI Atlas deployed significant resources, but domestic companies such as Quark, ByteDance, and 360 AI Browser have also entered the market.
According to Jiemian News, Tabbit was officially launched in August 2025, development began in September, the first version was completed in November, it was tested internally at Meituan in December, and it was launched for public beta after the Spring Festival.
After a rapid 100-day launch in the domestic market and once being involved in a plagiarism scandal, Tabbit recently quietly launched an international version. After stopping recruitment in June last year, the Tabbit team has recently restarted overseas position recruitment.
The former Light Years Beyond team behind it has also attracted much attention. In 2023, after "Light Years Beyond," founded by Wang Huiwen, the former co-founder and senior vice president of Meituan, was acquired by Meituan, it was integrated into GN06 and operates at Meituan. Currently, it has no connection with Meituan's main businesses such as food delivery, flash shopping, and hotel and travel. It mainly focuses on the exploration of AI-native applications. In addition to Tabbit, GN06 also launched the AI image/video generation tool Miaosha and the AI emotional companion app "WOW" at the end of 2023 and 2024 respectively.
According to Leifeng.com, in November 2025, the former person in charge of applications at Light Years Beyond was transferred to Meituan and reported directly to Li Shubin. Meituan's GN06 team has dozens of members, and its product line focuses on aspects such as entertainment and agents in AI applications.
In 2026, Meituan has not only been deploying self-developed large models and launching products intensively but has also witnessed changes in its internal atmosphere. According to a report by Huxiu, a mid-level Meituan technology executive said that since the beginning of 2026, Meituan has been thoroughly "AI-izing" internally. In the technology department of a core business line he is in, more than 95% of the code work relies on Meituan's self-developed tool, CatPaw. CatPaw is almost embedded in every step of his current work.
In addition, in 2026, Meituan set "using AI to improve human efficiency" as one of its key goals. The core idea is to reduce the proportion of manual labor in "repetitive work" through AI. This includes not only regular code generation but also improving the efficiency of delivery in complex and difficult scenarios through drones and unmanned delivery vehicles. Based on AI, Meituan will re-evaluate its business processes, optimize them to reduce internal friction, and create an organizational culture that is suitable for the AI ecosystem and efficient processes.
Meituan Seizes the AI Entrance with Tencent's Help
Compared with major Internet companies with more abundant traffic and stronger technical capabilities, Meituan's AI business has a relatively low profile in the eyes of the public, whether it is in terms of self-developed large models or product exploration for the C2C market. Take the independent app AI life secretary "Xiaomei" as an example. As of now, its download volume on the Android platform is only 1.69 million.
Meituan wants to redefine its role in the AI era. At the Q1 earnings call this year, Wang Xing said that the cooperation between Meituan's AI agent "Xiaomei" and Tencent's Yuanbao is about to be launched. Users can input their local life needs in Tencent's Yuanbao and directly use Xiaomei to access Meituan's food delivery and other services without having to switch to the Meituan App.
This is quite similar to Alibaba's model of ordering food through Tongyi Qianwen. The difference is that Alibaba completes the closed-loop within its own system, while Meituan opens up its fulfillment capabilities to all AI agents. What Meituan wants to achieve is that no matter which AI entrance users use, such as Yuanbao, Doubao, or other platforms, it will still be Meituan's merchant network and rider system that complete the delivery and offline services.
Rather than competing for the "super entrance" in the AI era, Meituan has chosen a "step-back" strategy, turning the core capabilities accumulated by the platform into a "service foundation" that all AI agents cannot bypass.
This is also Meituan's "Physical AI" strategy, which is mainly based on Meituan's data and fulfillment advantages. Specifically, Meituan's AI can learn and iterate in a complex and real environment covering more than 2,800 cities and counties across the country with tens of millions of transactions every day. Wang Xing once used an image metaphor to illustrate: "Even if Einstein were to be a secretary and asked to book a restaurant, he still wouldn't know if there were any seats available. This is not a matter of intelligence but of information."
Under this vision, Meituan has begun to introduce specific implementation paths. At the Q1 earnings call in 2026, Wang Xing proposed a new strategic direction - serving AI agents (To A). He said that in the future, in addition to serving consumers (To C) and merchants (To B), serving AI agents (To A) is becoming increasingly important.
Meituan has redefined AI agents as its "customers." Some specific products have already been launched. In May, Meituan released the "Errand Skill," opening up its errand ordering capabilities to the AI assistant ecosystem in the form of a packaged skill. Currently, several AI assistants have connected to Meituan's errand service.
The scope of AI implementation in the physical world also depends on Meituan's drone business, which it has been exploring for a long time. By seizing the opportunity in the low-altitude economy, Meituan can extend the service boundary of its "Physical AI" from the ground to the air.
This is a business that Meituan has been deploying since 2017. At that time, Mao Yining led his startup team to join Meituan's drone business. In 2022, when Mao Yining was interviewed by "Computer News," he mentioned that by September 2022, the team had more than 300 members, and many of them were already leaders in the fields of artificial intelligence or hardware.
The special feature of this business is that it reports directly to Wang Xing. In the organizational structure adjustment of Meituan in February 2024, Wang Xing clearly stated in an internal email that the reporting relationship of the drone and overseas businesses was upgraded to report directly to him, in order to increase the priority of technology and internationalization businesses.
High Investment, Low Profile, Not Pursuing a "Token Factory"
Meituan is not "low-key" in its AI investment. Wang Puzhong, the CEO of Meituan's Core Local Commerce, once publicly stated that Meituan invests more than 10 billion yuan in the AI field every year. Meituan CEO Wang Xing also disclosed that since the beginning of 2023, Meituan has continuously increased its capital expenditure and investment in AI talent. Most of the funds have been used for the construction of self-developed large models, and the investment scale ranks among the top in domestic enterprises, second only to some cloud computing giants.
However, compared with the AI investments of hundreds of billions made by companies such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, Meituan's investment scale is still relatively small. Coupled with the constraints on resources and energy caused by the food delivery war in the past year, Meituan's AI narrative has not been very prominent in the eyes of the public.
This perception of "high investment, low profile" is particularly evident in the self-developed large model business. The LongCat team rarely appears in public, and there is no obvious "top person" in terms of technology. For products such as "Xiaotuan," when products like Tongyi Qianwen are promoting users' awareness of ordering food through generous red envelope subsidies, Meituan's "Wen Xiaotuan" has a relatively low profile.
Meituan's AI business also has a strong corporate gene. Meituan has not placed all its bets on self-developed models. Take the AI browser Tabbit as an example. Its strategy is to integrate multiple leading large models - in addition to the self-developed LongCat-Flash-Chat, it also connects to DeepSeek, Doubao, Tongyi Qianwen, Kimi, etc. What Meituan cares more about is whether the model can achieve results in its own scenarios, rather than how powerful the model itself is. This style of strong integration with business runs through Meituan's overall AI layout.
Illustration: Meituan's "LongCat" page.
For example, one difference between LongCat and other large model products on the market is its deep integration with the local life business. On its product interface, navigation bars such as "Find nearby entertainment," "Make a travel guide," and "Book accommodation" are clearly visible, continuing Meituan's consistent logic of "business first."
Under the "Physical AI" strategy, Meituan does not pursue becoming a "Token factory" but is committed to becoming the "infrastructure" that connects digital intelligence with real-world services. This is a strategic move based on its unique business gene. In comparison, products such as LongCat and Tabbit actively launched by Meituan are difficult to establish significant differentiated advantages in the short term in the current fierce competition in AI tools and models. Their future competitiveness will depend more on the depth of integration with Meituan's physical service ecosystem.
Before AI disrupts the local life market, scenarios and fulfillment capabilities are Meituan's real trump cards, and Meituan must hold them firmly in its own hands.
This article is from the WeChat public account “Tech Planet” (ID: tech618), written by Lin Jing, and published by 36Kr with authorization.