Alibaba Develops Qwen Office and E-commerce Edition with Nearly 100 Staff: Planned for Launch Before Double 11, But Cannot Yet Place Ads on Behalf

动察 Beating AI News Flash: Alibaba is organizing nearly a hundred people to develop the first industry version of Qianwen Office, specifically for e-commerce merchants, and plans to launch it before the Tmall Double 11 presale on October 15. The project began preparations in June this year and entered intensive development in September. It is coordinated by Qianwen Office CEO Chen Yusen, with Huang Peipei (alias Lingpei) responsible. The new version is not a standalone app, but a switch to an "E-commerce Operations" mode within Qianwen Office.

The e-commerce version mainly covers scenarios such as business analysis, product management, material production, and marketing promotion. Merchants can have AI aggregate data from multiple platforms and multiple stores, identify business anomalies, and provide suggestions; they can also upload product, clothing, and model materials to create marketing images, and then use AI spreadsheets to organize consumer reviews and to-do items. Taobao and Tmall data can be directly connected, Youzan and Keruyun are being gradually integrated, and other platforms require merchant authorization login.

The e-commerce industry has already contributed about 20% of Qianwen Office's paying users, making it the industry with the highest share at present. The person in charge, Huang Peipei, previously led the incubation of the AI e-commerce tool Huiwa. As of September this year, that product had 1.5 million users and approximately RMB 50 million in annualized recurring revenue. In March this year, Alibaba also launched Accio Work for cross-border business, which can already assist merchants with product selection, store setup, and product publishing.

However, the e-commerce version of Qianwen Office is still mainly focused on data analysis and content production. It cannot directly adjust merchants' ad traffic plans for them, nor can it automatically spend money to place ads, let alone take over an entire store. This time, Alibaba hopes to centralize operational work scattered across different tools and make Qianwen Office the entry point for merchants' daily work. Compared with feature competition among general AI office products, Alibaba is trying to use its own e-commerce data and merchant resources to compete for paying customers.