Meituan Bets on AI Community With 'MiYou' Launch, Deepens Ties With $20B Kimi

Meituan is launching "MiYou," an AI-native community, signaling a strategic push from investment to building its own AI ecosystem. The move comes as Meituan’s venture arm leads a $2 billion funding round for the Kimi chatbot developer Moonshot AI, valuing the startup at $20 billion and underscoring the food-delivery giant's deepening commitment to the sector.

"The project, developed by Meituan's in-house AI innovation team, is positioned as a community ecosystem open to all large models and Agent products," according to a company statement reported by Chinese media.

The "MiYou" community, which has entered public beta, is described as a platform where AI agents, personified as "lobsters," help users with tasks like exploring money-making opportunities. This software launch coincides with Meituan's hardware-like investment strategy. Its venture arm, Long-Z Investments (also known as Dragon Ball), contributed over $200 million to the latest funding round for Moonshot AI, maker of the popular Kimi chatbot. Kimi's annualized recurring revenue reportedly doubled to over $200 million in just two months this year.

Meituan's two-pronged approach—investing heavily in foundation models like Kimi while building its own application layer with "MiYou"—positions it as a key player in China's competitive AI landscape. By fostering a community platform, Meituan (03690.HK) aims to drive user engagement and create a distribution channel for AI applications, potentially creating a powerful moat against rivals like Alibaba and Tencent, who are also backing major AI players. The success of "MiYou" could provide a significant new growth vector for the company.

Kimi's Meteoric Rise

Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based developer of the Kimi chatbot, has seen its valuation skyrocket, reaching $20 billion in its latest Meituan-led round. This is a nearly seven-fold increase from its $3 billion valuation in December 2024. The company, founded in March 2023 by former Meta and Google researcher Yang Zhilin, has now raised over $3.9 billion in the past six months alone, making it one of China's most well-funded AI startups.

The firm's Kimi K2.6 model ranks among the world's top three most popular AI models by token usage, according to OpenRouter, a platform for developers. This rapid technological advancement and strong commercial traction, with annualized revenue doubling from $100 million to over $200 million between March and April 2026, have attracted a roster of blue-chip investors including Alibaba, Tencent, and CITIC Private Equity Funds.

A Crowded Field

Meituan's push into the AI ecosystem comes as competition in China's AI sector intensifies. The launch of "MiYou" can be seen as an attempt to build a user-facing application that can leverage the powerful foundation models being developed by companies it invests in. This strategy of pairing a proprietary application with investments in underlying technology mirrors moves by other Chinese tech giants.

The competitive field includes DeepSeek, which is reportedly in talks for funding at a $45 billion valuation, and other rapidly iterating players like MiniMax and Zhipu AI. By creating an open platform with "MiYou," Meituan may be aiming to become the default hub for users to interact with various AI agents, regardless of their underlying model. This could give it a crucial advantage in the race for AI application dominance, moving beyond the capital-intensive foundation model layer.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.