Meituan to Open Up AI Programming Capabilities and Launch New Product NoCode | Exclusive from 36Kr
Text | Deng Yongyi, Ren Cairu
Editor | Su Jianxun, Yang Xuan
Meituan's implementation of its AI strategy is accelerating further.
36Kr has exclusively learned that Meituan will soon officially launch an AI programming tool called "NoCode", which is positioned in the direction of Vibe Coding.
36Kr has observed that in early May, one of Meituan's corporate entities registered a new domain name "nocode.cn". After entering this domain name, it can be found that the product has entered the gray - scale testing phase.
△Source: nocode.cn
36Kr has learned that "NoCode" is developed by Meituan's R & D Quality and Efficiency Team, which belongs to Meituan's basic R & D platform.
AI programming has become a popular AI startup direction since 2024. Products such as Cursor and Devin have become extremely popular globally. The mainstream routes in this field can be divided into two types. One is auxiliary programming, with typical products like Cursor, Windsurf, Bolt, Lovable, etc., where humans need to complete most of the work with the assistance of AI. There are also products more inclined to autonomous programming, such as Devin, where AI plays the leading role in programming, and humans are mainly responsible for grasping the general direction of tasks.
In China, almost all major tech companies have entered the field of AI programming and launched corresponding products, such as Alibaba's Tongyi Lingma, ByteDance's Trae, and Baidu's Wenxin Kuaima.
According to a person from Meituan's technical system, the product positioning of NoCode is closer to the recent star AI product Lovable - an AI programming application mainly targeting non - technical users with a conversational interaction mode. Users only need to have multiple rounds of conversations with the model, and it can automatically complete different coding tasks and subsequent deployments. Typical application scenarios include data analysis, product prototyping, operation tools, and portal website generation.
However, NoCode will optimize more for specific tasks, especially on the inference side. A person familiar with the matter said that NoCode uses the Code Agent architecture and can perform multi - step logical reasoning. For example, AI can schedule operations such as file retrieval, log analysis, and database queries.
Regarding why an AI Agent product is being launched at this time, according to a person close to the NoCode team, Meituan hopes to open this product to merchants and a wider user group, helping them complete related work as easily as ordering takeout, reducing the IT and digitalization thresholds for small and medium - sized merchants, and allowing users to experience the efficiency improvement and innovation fun brought by AI technology. In the future, other AI products within Meituan are also planned to be gradually opened up.
In the wave of large - model AI, Meituan has been keeping a low profile in the past two years, with few exposures. It was not until the DeepSeek craze in early 2025 that Meituan's AI business began to open up. In Meituan's earnings conference call in March, Meituan CEO Wang Xing first mentioned the AI strategy.
In fact, Meituan started investing in large - model research not late. The self - developed large model LongCat (Chinchilla), first disclosed by Wang Xing at the earnings conference, has been under development since 2023.
In addition, Meituan also invested in Zhipu, one of the "Six Big Tigers" in the large - model field, at an early stage and launched the AI social companion product Wow in 2023. In 2024, multiple AI functions were launched in Meituan's core products, such as the AI takeout assistant "Ask Xiaodai".
The launch of NoCode also conforms to Wang Xing's newly proposed AI strategy. Wang Xing once said that Meituan's AI strategy is based on three levels:
AI at work, mainly applying AI to all employees' work and operations;
AI in products, transforming existing 2B and 2C products and services with AI and creating brand - new AI - native products;
And Building LLM (Large Language Model), actively investing in Capex (Capital Expenditure) to improve the ability of self - developed base models.
Among these three levels, the self - developed large model has been disclosed at the earnings conference. As for "AI in products", in addition to NoCode, Meituan has also disclosed an AI - native product initiated by Wang Puzhong, the CEO of Meituan's core local business, which is currently in the R & D process. Its vision is "everyone can have a personal life secretary".
36Kr has learned that Meituan's management has also been focusing on the "AI at work" where NoCode is involved. For example, they require leaders at all levels to apply for and use AI efficiency - enhancing tools and share application cases and issues that need iteration internally.
A person familiar with the matter told 36Kr that Meituan's investment in the field of AI programming can be traced back to early 2023, and NoCode is a project incubated by Meituan's internal AI Hackathon. Initially, this product served Meituan's internal R & D needs.
It is reported that the internal version of NoCode has connected some of Meituan's internal data and technology systems and entered the work scenarios of various business lines within Meituan. Some product and sales personnel can already use this product to develop product prototypes, applications, etc. to meet the long - tail needs of internal businesses or small and medium - sized merchants.
In addition to NoCode, Meituan has also developed another more professional AI development tool called CatPaw, which is comparable to AI programming tools like Cursor targeting developers. However, CatPaw is currently mainly open to the internal staff.
As a result, AI has significantly improved Meituan's operation and work efficiency.
In the earnings report, Meituan said that 27% of the newly added code within the company was generated by AI. Now this figure has increased. A person familiar with the matter told 36Kr that after the launch of another programming tool CatPaw, the weekly active rate of Meituan's internal R & D personnel exceeded 80%, and the proportion of newly added code generated by AI reached about 50% per week.
The person revealed that NoCode is the first step in the spill - over of Meituan's "AI at work" capabilities. And the shift from internal to external use is, to some extent, evidence of the acceleration of Meituan's AI strategy.
After the earnings conference in March, Meituan has clearly started to "go all out". On the one hand, it has increased the recruitment of AI talents. Wang Puzhong even directly recruited for the AI - native product team on social media.
It can be predicted that after Meituan opens up its AI programming capabilities, the competition in this field will become even more intense.
Cover source | AI - generated
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This article is from the WeChat official account "Intelligent Emergence". The author is Deng Yongyi. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.