Analysis of User Growth Strategy and Valuation Impact of Ant Group's AI Health App 'Ant Afu'
Based on collected information, I will analyze the impact of rapid user growth of Ant Group’s AI health app ‘Ant Afu’ on its digital strategic value and valuation from multiple dimensions.
As an AI health app under Ant Group, ‘Ant Afu’ has recently performed brightly:
- Monthly Active User Scale: Exceeded 15 million, ranking top 5 among domestic AI apps and becoming the largest health management AI app [2]
- Daily Activity: Answers over 5 million health questions per day [1]
- User Structure: 55% of users from third-tier and below cities, showing inclusive characteristics [2]
- Market Ranking: Surged to third place in Apple App Store overall downloads [1]
- Growth Rate: Monthly active compound growth rate of 83.4%, far exceeding industry growth [2]
‘Ant Afu’ has formed a complete service closed loop:
- Medical Resources: Connects over 5000 hospitals and 300,000 real doctors nationwide
- Expert Support: Has ‘AI avatar’ team of over 500 famous doctors including academicians Liao Wanqing and Dong Jiahong
- Technical Capability: Supports photo recognition of 50 common skin diseases with over 95% accuracy, covering 99% of common reports [2]
Ant Group clearly proposed ‘Alipay Dual Flywheel’, ‘AI First’ and ‘Globalization’ as three core strategies in 2024 [2]. The successful upgrade of ‘Ant Afu’ is a key implementation of the ‘AI First’ strategy in vertical scenarios, showing Ant’s strategic intention to deepen layout from general AI to vertical fields.
Previously, Ant Group officially upgraded the original ‘Ant Digital Medical Health Division’ to ‘Ant Health Business Group’, demonstrating its determination to build medical health business into a new strategic pillar, forming obvious business diversification with Ant’s traditional payment and financial services.
Facing AI entry competition, Ant chose a differentiated path: launching general apps like ‘Lingguang’ while deeply cultivating the health vertical, which is ‘just-needed, high-frequency, high-trust’. This strategy avoids direct competition with general large model products and builds a moat in the health field with high professional barriers.
Evolved from simple AI tool to end-to-end service: from problem identification, report interpretation to registration and medical insurance payment.
China Consumer Association predicts that China’s big health industry will reach nearly 9 trillion yuan in 2024 [2], providing huge market space for AI health apps. Data shows that health-related searches on Baidu platform exceed 200 million per day [2], confirming strong health demand.
55% of users from third-tier and below cities [2], indicating huge growth potential in sinking markets, consistent with the popularization trend of digital medical health services in China.
The success of ‘Ant Afu’ provides Ant Group with the third major revenue source besides payment and financial services, helping reduce reliance on traditional businesses and improve valuation stability.
As a practical application scenario of the trillion-parameter large model ‘Ring-1T-preview’ [1], it demonstrates Ant’s AI technology commercialization capability, which is an important support for valuation growth.
Over 5 million health questions per day [1] not only provide large training data but also form valuable medical health data assets with high commercial value under compliance.
According to the latest valuation data, Ant Group ranks 5th in the 2025 global unicorn list with 635 billion yuan [1]. Compared with the 570 billion yuan valuation in April 2024 [1], it has increased by about 11.4%. The success of AI apps like ‘Ant Afu’ strongly supports this valuation growth.
Internet giants are rapidly laying out the AI terminal market: Alibaba launched Quark AI Glasses, ByteDance released ‘Doubao Mobile Assistant’ [3]. In AI apps, all giants are looking for differentiated breakthroughs, and health has become an important battlefield.
Ant chose to deepen in the health field with extremely high professional barriers and fault tolerance costs, which is actually a touchstone to test the depth of AI value [2]. Once user trust and brand awareness are established, it will form an irreplicable competitive advantage.
‘Ant Afu’ collaborates with Alipay’s payment capability and medical insurance payment function, creating a unique ‘AI+Payment+Medical’ ecological closed loop. This ecological synergy is difficult for pure AI companies to achieve.
- Policy Support: Digital medical health aligns with national policy direction
- Technology Progress: Continuous AI iteration will improve service capability
- Market Education: User acceptance of AI medical services is increasing rapidly
- Regulatory Compliance: Strict regulatory requirements in the medical health field
- Professional Threshold: Extremely high requirements for professionalism and accuracy of medical services
- Intensified Competition: Other giants may increase investment
The rapid growth of ‘Ant Afu’ has multiple strategic values for Ant Group:
- Valuation Support: As a successful practice of the AI First strategy, it strongly supports the 635 billion yuan valuation
- Business Diversification: Successfully built the third pillar business, reducing reliance on payment and financial services
- Technology Verification: Proved the commercialization capability of the trillion-parameter large model
- Ecological Construction: Formed a unique ‘AI+Payment+Medical’ ecological closed loop
- Market Positioning: Seized a favorable position in the trillion-level health market
From the valuation perspective, the success of AI apps like ‘Ant Afu’ not only directly contributes new revenue sources but also demonstrates Ant Group’s successful transformation from a fintech company to a comprehensive technology platform. This transformation capability has a high valuation premium in the current market environment. In the future, with the continuous expansion of user scale and further improvement of service capability, ‘Ant Afu’ is expected to become an important engine driving Ant Group’s valuation to grow further.
[1] East Money - “‘Ant Afu’ Surges to Third Place in Apple App Store Overall Downloads” (https://wap.eastmoney.com/a/202512163593058282.html)
[2] Sina Finance - “Ant Group, Latest Official Announcement!” (https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/t/2025-12-15/doc-inhawtsc1865592.shtml)
[3] EET China - “Price Hike Wave Names, Will Power Semiconductors Respond?” (https://www.eet-china.com/mp/a33041.html)
Insights are generated using AI models and historical data for informational purposes only. They do not constitute investment advice or recommendations. Past performance is not indicative of future results.