Alibaba Quark: the bold challenge to conquer millions of new customers

In an ultra-competitive universe where digital giants compete in ingenuity, Alibaba takes a new major step by officially unveiling Quark, a multifunctional AI application designed to revolutionize the user experience in China. This launch comes as artificial intelligence becomes an essential strategic lever to conquer millions of new customers, integrate breakthrough innovations in e-commerce, and boost the digital growth of companies. Building on its past as an online commerce expert, Alibaba takes a bold bet by merging intelligent search, conversational assistant, and connected objects into a coherent offer, designed to transform daily uses.

With Quark, Alibaba directly tackles the conquest of a mass market segment that is far from saturated, despite the dominant presence of ByteDance, Tencent, and other technological giants. The ambition lies not only in expanding its user base but also in redeploying a commercial strategy based on the seamless integration of innovations around digital marketing and personal and professional productivity optimization tools.

The simultaneous release of the Quark AI Glasses, smart glasses integrating the power of the Qwen3 language model, emphasizes the importance given to the omnichannel user experience. These connected glasses promise a new technological breath, combining voice interaction, real-time translation, and meeting transcription, thus shaking up established standards to open a new connected era.

Why Alibaba boldly launches into the battle of consumer artificial intelligence

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has long focused its efforts on the professional sector through its Cloud Intelligence division. Despite an impressive history with Tongyi Qianwen, a cutting-edge AI model completed at the end of 2023, the company observed limited usage at about 6.96 million monthly active users in September 2025. This figure, minimal compared to the hundreds of millions drawn by other players, highlighted a real gap and the need to rethink its strategy.

ByteDance, Tencent, and other players like DeepSeek largely dominated the landscape, attracting several tens or even hundreds of millions of users with solutions better suited to the general public. Faced with this observation, Alibaba took the step of transforming Quark, initially just a simple browser, into a multifunctional AI assistant capable of combining search and dialogue for a more intuitive interface.

This decision reflects a clear desire to meet market expectations and fully embrace technological innovation, thus aligning with a logic of ambitious growth and expansion. The transformation of Quark symbolizes a turning point in Alibaba’s vision, which now seeks to establish itself firmly in the consumer digital marketing field thanks to a tool that combines power, simplicity, and versatility.

By exploring this duality between intelligent search and natural conversation, Alibaba intends to leverage its complete ecosystem – from e-commerce to logistics, through cloud and financial services – to create a unique and integrated synergy. This bold challenge places the company at the crossroads between cutting-edge technological innovation and humanized customer experience.

Innovative features of Quark: how Alibaba rethinks the user experience

At the heart of Quark, a state-of-the-art technological architecture based on the Qwen3 language model, the latest generation of large AIs designed by Alibaba. This engine allows not only smooth conversational interaction but also advanced intelligent search, naturally responding to complex queries while performing various practical tasks.

One of the major advances lies in the “Assistant” mode integrated into the application, accessible on all mobile devices. This multimodal dialogue interface accepts commands via text, voice, images, or even videos, thus enhancing the granularity of possible interactions. For example, a user can take a photo of a product, ask for its online availability, then complete their purchase without switching applications.

In addition to this flexibility, Quark incorporates daily use tools intended for writing, image editing, or in-depth search, based on both practical and playful logic. The entire system relies on the MCP (Model Context Protocol), an Alibaba in-house mechanism that ensures smooth connectivity between the various services offered on the platform, thereby optimizing every link in the commercial, logistical, and financial chain.

To summarize the concrete advantages of Quark:

• A conversational engine capable of interpreting and executing complex multi-format commands
• Perfect integration with Alibaba services for an enhanced e-commerce experience
• Multimodal features facilitating information capture via images and videos
• Creation and editing tools accessible on mobile to enhance productivity
• An intuitive interface designed to respond to new digital consumer habits

This innovative range gives Quark a unique asset beyond a simple search engine. It embodies an intelligent companion allied to decision-making and task facilitation, in a context of exploding digital marketing where speed and accuracy of responses are major assets.

Impact of the Quark AI Chat Assistant on e-commerce in China

Alibaba’s strength lies in its business model deeply rooted in e-commerce. By adopting the Quark AI Chat Assistant, the firm aims to transform the client-platform interaction, offering a new face to the digital commercial relationship. The transformation notably rests on the tool’s ability to provide automated, intelligent, and 24/7 customer service while promoting a smooth shopping experience.

Beyond simple product search, Quark enables consumers to benefit from personalized recommendations based on behavioral and contextual criteria. This level of personalization relies on advanced data processing and predictive analysis, reflecting a commercial strategy aimed at customer loyalty and maximizing customer lifetime value.

The Quark logic also promotes better management of digital marketing campaigns, with AI being able to detect emerging trends in real-time, adjust promotions, and propose more effective targeting strategies. This dynamic creates a beneficial ripple effect for both sellers and consumers by reducing the gap between supply and demand.

During peak commercial times like the 11.11 Shopping Festival, this vocal and visual assistant becomes a valuable ally. It manages exceptional volumes of queries, coordinates logistical services, and optimizes purchase journeys by avoiding stockouts, a crucial challenge to maintain growth and significantly increase the number of new customers.

Quark AI Glasses: Alibaba’s new frontier of technological innovation

Alongside software development, Alibaba bets on impressive hardware innovation with the launch of the Quark AI Glasses. These smart glasses represent a new step in technological conquest, fitting into the growing trend of connected wearables and offering an immersive and intuitive user experience.

Carefully designed for optimal comfort, they offer advanced features: phone calls, music listening, simultaneous translation, and live transcription of professional meetings. All this thanks to the integration of the Qwen3 model, guaranteeing natural voice interaction and contextual understanding of content and environment.

Extended autonomy, essential for prolonged use outside the home, makes these glasses attractive to both professional and private users. They thus fit perfectly into daily life, promoting both instant communication and intelligent real-time information capture.

Their scheduled availability on October 24, 2025, during the 11.11 Shopping Festival, indicates a perfectly calibrated commercial strategy to maximize impact and attract attention right from the initial launch phase. The glasses will be offered at different prices depending on the models, with personalized options adapted to visual corrections and dedicated accessories.

Alibaba’s commercial strategy: attracting millions of new customers thanks to Quark

Alibaba has orchestrated an ambitious commercial strategy to ensure Quark’s success. Aware that having an innovative product is not enough, the group relies on a multichannel digital marketing plan using its flagship platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin. This synergy between digital ecosystems aims to maximize visibility and rapid adoption of the new AI assistant.

The launch coincides with the 11.11 Shopping Festival, a peak e-commerce period where demand explodes and competition to attract consumers is fierce. By placing Quark at the heart of this dynamic, Alibaba hopes to massively convert visitors into regular users and thus increase its digital footprint.

Another growth vector is the seamless integration of Quark with the group’s logistical and financial infrastructures, guaranteeing a smooth and secure user experience. This holistic approach means the commercial strategy does not stop at mere application distribution but extends to full mastery of the customer journey from start to finish.

Here are the essential pillars of this strategy:

• Launch during a major commercial event to leverage massive traffic
• Use of Alibaba’s platforms and communities for a network effect
• Hyper-targeted marketing campaigns based on user data
• Strategic partnerships with other major players in digital and retail
• Quality guarantees and continuous product adaptation via real-time user feedback

This approach illustrates Alibaba’s desire to go beyond simple technological innovation to establish a new standard of customer experience, both practical, intelligent, and accessible.

Competitive context: how Alibaba positions itself against AI giants

In a globalized market where players such as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, ByteDance, and Tencent compete for supremacy in artificial intelligence, Alibaba faces multiple challenges. On the one hand, it must catch up with significant delays compared to platforms that have already retained hundreds of millions of users. On the other hand, the company must impose a differentiating offer, adapted to the specific needs of a demanding Chinese audience and its international ambitions.

The launch of Quark and the Quark AI Glasses marks a dual positioning: robust software innovation and strategic hardware breakthrough. Alibaba no longer just evolves its internal services but intends to directly capture the heart of the consumer market, so far neglected.

It is important to note the current gaps in monthly active users between Alibaba and its Asian competitors:

Company	AI Product	Monthly Active Users (M)	Strengths
ByteDance	Doubao	150	Viral content, social integration
DeepSeek	DeepSeek Assistant	73.4	Intelligent search, multimodality
Tencent	Tencent AI Chat	64.2	Gaming and communication ecosystem
Alibaba	Quark AI Chat Assistant	6.96	E-commerce integration, cloud

This table highlights the gap to be bridged, explaining why Alibaba must multiply its efforts in terms of innovation, digital marketing, and rapid growth of its user base. The group also counts on the strength of its business model to tilt this dynamic to its advantage, notably thanks to its ability to offer an unprecedented multifaceted experience.

The future challenges and Alibaba’s vision for sustained growth

By deploying Quark and its smart glasses, Alibaba projects a vision of artificial intelligence that transcends the classic digital tool to become a true daily companion. This orientation towards advanced personalization, task automation, and deep integration into business needs outlines an ambitious trajectory where technology serves the community as a whole.

The challenges to overcome remain considerable. Alibaba will not only have to keep up with the rapid evolutions in the AI field and user expectations but also strengthen its position against the rising power of other global players. The bold challenge also consists of expanding Quark’s geographical scope beyond Chinese borders to initiate a true international conquest.

For this reason, Alibaba is actively working on the development of localized and adaptive versions of the Qwen3 model, as well as diversifying its wearables, seeking to offer a complete and modular range that will meet the diverse demands of foreign markets.

In summary, the success of conquering millions of new customers relies on:

• Constant technological innovation regularly renewing the user experience
• An agile, data-oriented commercial strategy
• Integrated hardware-software development
• An ability to quickly adapt to international expectations
• Transparent and engaging communication with the user community

This table of challenges provides a framework for better understanding the scope of Alibaba’s ambition in the coming years, positioning Quark as a key player in the new digital economy.