TLDR: Meituan has launched a new AI agent named Xiaomei, powered by its LongCat AI model, to revolutionize its food delivery and local services. The agent allows users to place orders and book restaurants via voice commands and offers personalized meal recommendations. This strategic move comes as Meituan intensifies its battle against rivals like Alibaba and JD.com in China’s competitive on-demand service market.
In a significant stride to bolster its market position and innovate within the fiercely competitive food delivery and local services sector, Chinese tech giant Meituan officially unveiled its new artificial intelligence agent, “Xiaomei,” on September 12, 2025. This advanced AI agent is built upon Meituan’s proprietary LongCat AI model, marking a pivotal moment in the company’s technological advancement.
Xiaomei is designed to streamline and enhance the user experience by enabling customers to order food and book restaurants through intuitive voice commands. Beyond basic order placement, the AI agent is also capable of providing personalized meal recommendations, aiming to offer a more tailored and efficient service to Meituan’s vast user base.
The launch of Xiaomei is strategically timed amidst an escalating rivalry in China’s on-demand services market, where Meituan faces robust competition from industry heavyweights such as Alibaba Group, particularly its Ele.me food delivery service, and JD.com. The competitive landscape has seen all major players recently commit to avoiding aggressive price wars, following regulatory warnings.
In a related development, Alibaba had earlier this week announced a substantial investment of an additional 1 billion yuan (approximately US$140 million) in incentives to expand its local services business. Furthermore, Alibaba has been actively overhauling its map services, integrating more AI-powered features to directly compete with Meituan’s established restaurant recommendation and booking functionalities.
Meituan’s shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange saw a modest rise of 0.6% following the announcement, while rival Alibaba experienced a more significant surge of up to 8%, fueled by growing investor optimism regarding its own AI prospects. The introduction of Xiaomei underscores a broader industry trend where AI is becoming a critical differentiator, with companies leveraging advanced technology to gain an edge in operational efficiency, customer engagement, and market share.
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The adoption of AI for voice ordering and customer service is not new to the industry. Previous successful implementations, such as Chipotle’s deployment of AI voice ordering across 1,800 U.S. locations by 2019, and Domino’s enhancement of its Facebook Messenger chatbot for order processing, have demonstrated the commercial viability and operational benefits of such technologies. Industry analyses from 2019 suggested that AI voice systems could potentially reduce labor costs associated with order-taking by up to 25%, highlighting the clear operational advantages that Meituan aims to harness with Xiaomei.
