Alibaba's Qwen chatbot has temporarily stopped issuing shopping coupons after a surge of user activity overloaded the system, interrupting a broader initiative to expand the assistant's role from answering queries to facilitating purchases directly.
U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) slipped roughly 1% in premarket trading following the report of operational difficulties.
The coupon distribution began on Friday. These vouchers were intended to let customers complete transactions on Alibaba-owned retail platforms directly through prompts within the chatbot environment. The promotion represented the initial phase of a 3 billion yuan ($433 million) campaign designed to lift user engagement during China’s Spring Festival holiday.
Alibaba described the effort as part of an "Agentic AI" rollout, aiming to make Qwen a unified entry point for consumers to access the company’s ecosystem of apps and finish purchases without leaving the chatbot interface. But the rollout encountered technical hurdles as the coupon program proceeded.
The company reported that 10 million orders were placed through the system in the first nine hours after launch. As weekend traffic grew, the Qwen account on the social platform Weibo posted on Sunday that the system was struggling to handle the volume and urged users to reduce their activity. The chatbot posted: "Everyone’s enthusiasm for experiencing AI shopping is too high! Currently there are too many participants in ’Qwen free order’, we are working tirelessly to maintain the campaign’s experience."
Alibaba also stated that customers who received coupons will still be able to use them, with the vouchers remaining valid through February 28.
In recent weeks the company has been pushing to convert Qwen into a single interface for accessing a broader suite of Alibaba services and completing transactions within the chatbot, mirroring approaches taken by other technology firms that integrate conversational assistants into their service stacks. The coupon incident underscores technical limits encountered when linking conversational AI to live commerce at scale.
Implications for markets and sectors
- Technology - The episode highlights operational risks when integrating conversational AI into high-volume commerce flows.
- Consumer e-commerce - User engagement tactics during major shopping periods can trigger abrupt spikes in demand that stress infrastructure.
- Equities - Short-term market reaction was reflected in Alibaba's premarket trading decline.
Context limitations
Available information details the timing, volume of orders, coupon validity through February 28, and the company message posted on Weibo. Additional technical diagnostics, remediation timelines, or internal capacity figures have not been disclosed.