---
title: "Qianwen Grows 613%, Ant Afu Grows 665%, and Yuanbao Overtakes DeepSeek | November 2025 AI Top 100"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research Substack"
originalPublishedAt: "2025-12-17T08:01:13+00:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/src-20251217-02html"
source: "https://uniqueresearch.substack.com/p/src-20251217-02html"
language: "en"
---

# Qianwen Grows 613%, Ant Afu Grows 665%, and Yuanbao Overtakes DeepSeek | November 2025 AI Top 100

_Original · Unique Research · 2025-12-17_

_Historical edition: This is the complete English translation of the original textual body of Unique Research's December 17, 2025 article. It preserves the author's data, interpretations, product descriptions, forecasts, methodological claims and research statements as historical source claims, not newly verified results or current capabilities. The original opening refers to October although the report concerns November; both dates are retained. The title states 665% growth for Ant Afu, while the prose states 664%; these source figures are not silently harmonized. Qianwen's 613% refers to download growth; Ant Afu's 664% refers to monthly-active-user growth, and Yuanbao's comparison with DeepSeek refers to downloads, not overall usage. The source does not identify the institutions or currency behind the 20-trillion health-industry forecast. The comparison of Afu to a family doctor and its promised reassurance are the author's characterization, not a claim that an AI system provides clinical certainty or replaces medical care. Product names and organizational developments are reproduced as described in the December article rather than independently dated here to the November measurement window._

If you only look at application-store rankings, the AI world in October seems familiar: ChatGPT and Gemini remain at the top, while Chinese users still most frequently open Doubao, DeepSeek, and Tencent Yuanbao. On the surface, everything remains stable, with entry-point "super applications" continuing to occupy the highest tier of attention.

The baton directing traffic is returning to the internet giants. That is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it may mean AI is finally ceasing to be merely a toy in the hands of geeks and beginning to penetrate the fabric of ordinary people's lives.

Unique Research's AI APP data for November reveals not only changes in rankings, but also a shift in the mood of the era: from blind worship of stronger models to the pragmatic pursuit of a better life.

01\. Tencent Comes from Behind: When the WeChat Ecosystem Begins to Overpower the Competition

For a long time, we discussed how DeepSeek led the industry as a technological dark horse. In November, however, a landmark turning point occurred.

Tencent Yuanbao recorded 21.32 million downloads in November, surpassing DeepSeek's 15.73 million.

This is fundamentally a collision between two strategies. DeepSeek represents pure model capability and still has as many as 170 million monthly active users, making it the first choice of countless technology enthusiasts. Tencent Yuanbao's counterattack, however, shows the formidable power of scenarios.

In addition to its usual intensive acquisition spending, Tencent made a strategically significant move in November by gradually integrating AI capabilities into WeChat Search. When hundreds of millions of users could not find answers through WeChat search, Yuanbao became the smoother solution. This deliberate strategy of embedding AI seamlessly into social and search pathways rapidly took Yuanbao beyond technology circles and into ordinary users' phones.

Technology can be a moat, but the ecosystem is the great river capable of carrying a boat or capsizing it.

02\. Alibaba's Two-Pronged Blitz: Stop Chatting and Start Getting Things Done

If Tencent was reclaiming lost ground, Alibaba in November looked more like it was launching a long-planned blitz.

Our data shows that Tongyi Qianwen became November's growth champion with an astonishing 613% increase in downloads. It all began in mid-November, when Alibaba officially launched the new Qianwen APP.

Notice Alibaba's change in wording: from Tongyi Qianwen to Qianwen, and from model to assistant. This is not merely a renaming, but a qualitative shift in positioning. The new Qianwen is no longer satisfied with chatting; it wants to get things done. Writing PPT presentations, preparing reports, and perhaps eventually integrating maps and food delivery, Alibaba is using the service ecosystem it knows best to address users' pain point of having nothing but emptiness after a conversation.

At the same time, another Alibaba product, Lingguang, precisely struck creators' anxieties and aspirations.

Within 6 days of launch, downloads exceeded two million, making Lingguang's explosive performance striking. Its signature capability—generating small applications from natural language in 30 seconds—allowed many ordinary people without coding skills to experience the thrill of creation for the first time. In an era when everyone wants a side business and greater efficiency, Lingguang provides more than a tool; it provides the emotional value of "I can do this too."

Qianwen targets the breadth of life, while Lingguang focuses on depth at work. Alibaba is weaving this horizontal-and-vertical net faster than anyone.

03\. Ant Afu: Selling Certainty in an Age of Anxiety

Among all the growth data, Ant Afu may be the warmest story.

In November, Ant Afu's monthly active users surged 664% month over month to nearly ten million. Behind this lies Ant Group's determination to elevate health care to a strategic priority by upgrading its former Digital Health Division into the Health Business Group.

Why health, and why now?

In a society with accelerating aging and widespread health anxiety, people urgently need a reliable health companion. Afu is not merely an appointment-booking tool; it is more like an always-available family doctor. When you face an abnormal result on a medical report late at night and do not know what to do, AI's professional interpretation and reassurance provide the emotional value most scarce today—certainty.

Some institutions predict that the scale of China's broader health industry will exceed 20 trillion in 2025 (currency unspecified in the source). Ant Afu's explosion demonstrates how much energy AI can unleash when addressing society's most painful problems.

04\. Education and Photo Enhancement Have Not Left the Stage

Many people focus only on chat assistants when reading AI rankings, but the structure of China's top 50 in November shows that mass adoption of AI often begins with more specific, everyday tasks.

Education products, for example, occupy four places in China's top 10 by monthly active users: Zuoyebang (101 million), Daxue Soutijiang (34.38 million), Xiaoyuan Souti (32.43 million), and Xiaoyuan Kousuan (31.71 million). Xiaoyuan Souti's monthly active users increased +36% month over month, tracing a very clear curve of rekindled demand. Education products grow not through showmanship but by embedding AI in things parents do every day: checking, correcting, tutoring, and reviewing.

Consider Meitu's portfolio as another example. In China's top 10 by downloads, Meitu Xiuxiu (20.94 million) and BeautyCam (5.74 million) remain stable. BeautyCam's downloads increased +28.64% month over month, showing that adding AI to traditional categories remains effective at acquiring users. Ordinary users do not need to understand what an agent is; they only need to discover that editing a photo or video is now easier. When a function delivers a definite result within 30 seconds, it is naturally suited to growing inside an App.

From Gazing at the Stars to Keeping Our Feet on the Ground

Looking through this November ranking, my strongest impression is that AI is finally and gradually reaching the real world.

It is no longer merely a lofty competition among large-model parameters. It becomes a search inside WeChat, a late-night health consultation, or the one-click generation of a daily report at work.

For every ordinary person, this may be the best of times. Competition among giants gives us more useful and even free tools to choose from. For the industry, meanwhile, the era of raising money merely by telling stories is over. Whoever genuinely enters users' lives will win the next stage.

Perhaps this is the simplest lesson from the November data: no matter how cold the technology, it must ultimately warm people's hearts.

Unique Research - An Authoritative Institution for Global AI Market Insights

Details of Unique Research's AI Top 100 rankings for November 2025 are as follows:

The TOP100 AI App product ranking by downloads and monthly active users, distinguishing between global and Chinese markets.

Our Influence and Recognition:

Unique Research's data and insights have been widely trusted and cited by leading investment institutions, academic organizations, and media outlets in China and abroad, becoming an important benchmark for their market analysis, investment decisions, and trend assessments. Our partners and citing organizations include, but are not limited to:

Securities Firms and Investment Banks: Sinolink Securities, China Securities, Huayuan Securities, Haitong Securities, and others

Authoritative Media: China Securities Journal, TMTPost, Jiemian News, and others

We firmly believe that only data capable of withstanding validation by the industry's core participants has genuine long-term value.

We believe in the power of open source and openness. Unique Research therefore makes the following three commitments:

The AI Top 100 ranking will remain permanently open source and freely accessible, with the complete methodology and raw data supporting full reproduction.

Data for the AI Top 100 ranking is strictly limited to independent third-party monitoring platforms. Data self-reported by companies is not accepted for evaluation.

The AI Top 100 ranking system remains absolutely neutral and does not accept any commercial collaboration or payment intended to influence ranking results.

How Should You Use the AI Top 100 Ranking?

If You Are an Investor/Analyst: This ranking provides a clean data benchmark that can withstand reverse-engineering verification. It is a reliable foundation for building investment models, discovering under-the-radar projects, and conducting cross-validation.

If You Are an AI Entrepreneur/Product Manager: You can not only identify competitors precisely, but also reproduce our methodology in depth to analyze your own product's market performance and optimize its iterations.

If You Are a Researcher/Student: The fully open-source nature of this report makes it an excellent free resource for academic research and market analysis. We encourage innovative research based on this data.

For the complete data behind the charts and rankings displayed in the AI Top 100, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied and is freely available for personal study, research, and other noncommercial uses. Commercial use requires prior authorization from Unique Research. We welcome ranked teams, subject to compliant use, to apply their rankings in business plans, recruitment materials, and other contexts as authoritative evidence of their capabilities.

Join the AGI Think Tank Open-Source Community

The AI Top 100 is more than a ranking. It is an open-source community dedicated to advancing transparency in AI market data. We invite developers, data scientists, and industry analysts to:

Reproduce and Validate: Visit our AGI Think Tank to obtain the complete data and methodology, validate our results, and propose improvements.

Build Together: Contribute code to help us expand data dimensions, such as API call-volume estimates and agent monitoring models.

Exchange Insights: Join our AGI Think Tank discussion group to share original insights derived from Unique Research data with peers.

One person's insight is limited; the wisdom of a group is boundless. Let us define the standards for measuring the AI market together.

01\. AI App Download and Monthly Active User Rankings

1.1 Global AI APP TOP 100 By Monthly Downloads

Based on its independent research into the AI industry and continuous tracking of thousands of AI companies and nearly ten thousand AI products worldwide, Unique Research ranks AI APP products by their cumulative downloads for the month and compiles the following list of the world's top 100 AI APP products by downloads:

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

1.2 Global AI APP TOP 100 By Monthly Active Users

Based on its independent research into the AI industry and continuous tracking of thousands of AI companies and nearly ten thousand AI products worldwide, Unique Research ranks AI APP products by their monthly active users and compiles the following list of the world's top 100 AI APP products by active users:

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

1.3 Domestic AI APP TOP50 By Monthly Downloads

Based on its independent research into the AI industry and continuous tracking of thousands of AI companies and nearly ten thousand AI products worldwide, Unique Research ranks AI APP products by their cumulative downloads for the month and compiles the following list of the top 50 AI APP products created by Chinese entrepreneurs for China's domestic market, ordered by downloads:

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

1.4 Domestic AI APP Monthly Active User TOP50

Based on its independent research into the AI industry and continuous tracking of thousands of AI companies and nearly ten thousand AI products worldwide, Unique Research ranks AI APP products by their monthly active users and compiles the following list of the top 50 AI APP products created by Chinese entrepreneurs for China's domestic market, ordered by active users:

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

\*For the complete data, visit 100aiapps.cn, where all visible data can be copied

02\. Research Statement

2.1 Data Notes

The AI product revenue data in this report, article, ranking, or chart is based on real-time tracking of traffic redirected from AI product websites to payment gateways such as Stripe, combined with time-series analysis. This process examines historical visits, fluctuations in monthly active users, and changes in pricing strategy in depth to construct a dynamic revenue-estimation model. The model's core parameters are determined through a three-part validation system comprising paid-conversion-funnel monitoring, reverse calibration using company-disclosed data, and comparison with industry benchmark conversion rates; they are also promptly compared with and corrected against corporate financial reports, financing announcements, and disclosures from authoritative media. Sample validation shows that the mean absolute error rate of predictions remains within ±10%, meeting industry-grade research standards.

The AI product traffic data in this report, article, ranking, or chart is based on the integration of multiple data sources and processing by Unique Research's intelligent algorithms. Monitoring is strictly limited to direct user visits through official applications and websites. Specifically, the data covers only behavior in which users directly access AI products through websites and native applications. It excludes traffic generated through browser plugins/extensions, desktop client software, WeChat/Alipay mini-program ecosystems, embedded services on third-party platforms such as Discord, local deployment of open-source models, API calls, and other indirect-access scenarios. The data focuses on monitoring direct use of AI products on core user endpoints, with the aim of objectively reflecting direct use on mainstream user devices.

Given the complexity and dynamic nature of data collection and processing, as well as the market environment's continual change, the displayed data may contain a certain degree of error and omission. It should therefore be regarded as a reference for research and analysis, intended to provide users with a window into the AI product market, rather than as a definitive basis for specific investment strategies or consulting advice.

Statement on Expanded Data Coverage:

We are actively developing and testing monitoring models for the following emerging fields, which are expected to be included gradually in future quarterly reports:

AI agent (Agents) ecosystems

AI hardware-device sales and activity

Estimates of large-model API call volume

Stay tuned.

2.2 Definitions

• Geographic Dimension

Overseas AI Products: Products founded by entrepreneurs or teams not of Chinese heritage and launched primarily for global markets, including but not limited to their domestic markets.

Domestic AI Products: Products founded by entrepreneurs or teams of Chinese nationality and launched primarily for China's domestic market.

Chinese AI Products Going Global: Products founded by entrepreneurs or teams of Chinese heritage but targeted primarily at overseas markets outside mainland China.

• Functional Dimension

AI-Native Applications: Applications in which artificial intelligence technologies and algorithms are deeply integrated from the outset of product design, and whose core value, business processes, or user experience depend entirely on AI. These applications do not merely use AI to optimize or enhance existing functions; AI is a core component, without which the applications would cease to exist or lose their core value.

AI-Enabled Applications: Applications that integrate or embed AI technology into an existing business logic and application framework to enhance current functions or provide entirely new ones. These applications may already have mature business models and market positioning, but by introducing AI, they can significantly improve efficiency, improve user experience, or create new value.

AI-Ecosystem Applications: Platform applications that support, connect, or facilitate communication among AI technology researchers, application developers, service providers, end users, and the broader AI ecosystem. They are not limited to the technical layer, but also span markets, communities, resource sharing, and other dimensions, with the aim of promoting the adoption, innovation, and collaborative development of AI.

2.3 Metrics

• WEB Data Metrics

Visits: The total number of visits to a website during a specified period, such as one month, used to measure the scale of website traffic. Page views during a continuous period of activity count as the same session, while renewed activity after an interval of more than 30 minutes or at the beginning of a new day is counted as a new visit, thereby providing a comprehensive and precise measure of traffic and visitor activity.

Unique Visitors: The number of unique IPs visiting the target website during a specified period, such as one month. If someone visits a website on multiple days during a month, that person is counted as only one unique visitor.

Subscription Revenue (labeled ARR by the source): The total revenue a website earns from subscription services provided to users over a specified period, such as one year. It excludes advertising revenue, transaction commissions, and one-off revenue such as professional services.

• APP Data Metrics

Downloads: The number of times an App is downloaded during a specified period, such as one month. It is generally measured by downloads of a single App from application stores such as the App Store and Google Play, and is an important indicator of an App's popularity and user appeal. It can also reflect the effectiveness of App promotion and marketing activities.

Active Users: The number of unique users who engage in at least one activity during a specified period, such as one month. Active users measure user participation and activity during a specific period and are generally used to evaluate an App's user scale and engagement.

In-App Purchase Revenue (IAP): Revenue generated by purchases that users make within an App to obtain virtual goods, additional services, premium features, and similar offerings. It excludes advertising revenue, direct user payments such as tips, and revenue from third-party Android app stores.

2.4 Free-Use Statement

This report is published by Unique Research and is copyrighted by Unique Research. Any Chinese-language republication or citation must identify the report's source; overseas institutions seeking to republish or cite it should contact us in advance for authorization. When citing data, use the attribution: \[Data source: Unique Research\]. When directly citing charts, use: \[Data source: Unique Research; charts produced by Unique Research\].

This report is an independent, original analysis produced by Unique Research as a third-party institution. Its content does not represent the position of any company and does not constitute investment advice to any person. Investors must therefore note that Unique Research, its employees, and its affiliates bear no responsibility for investment decisions made on this basis.

Where permitted by law, Unique Research and its affiliates may hold equity in companies mentioned in this report, or may provide or seek to provide them with financing, financial-advisory, or related services. Employees may serve as directors of companies mentioned in the report.

Appendix: Summary of Quarterly Trend Insights

First, the logic of growth is shifting from "acquisition-driven" to "habit-driven."

The most typical feature of November is the combination of weakening downloads but continuing growth in monthly active users across many leading applications. This means AI no longer depends entirely on novelty to stimulate installations, but has begun entering a stage in which usage frequency and retention sustain scale. For users, AI is no longer "a tool to try" but, in some scenarios, something whose absence feels inconvenient. At this stage, the decisive factor is often not model parameters, but whether a product can enter users' daily pathways.

Second, the value of entry-point products is being magnified again, but there is no longer only one kind of entry point.

Almost all the products with the most stable, high monthly active-user figures in the ranking have clear entry-point characteristics: search, super assistants, and system-level tools. Unlike the past, however, entry points are becoming layered. Some occupy the "question entry point" of search and Q&A, some the "task entry point" of learning, creation, and health, and others seek to occupy a "life entry point" as service-integrating assistants. The November data shows that the market no longer recognizes only "one super entry point," but is accepting multiple coexisting, individually high-frequency entry points.

Third, AI's value is migrating from "answers" to "delivery."

Whether in the recovery of education applications, the continued stability of image and video tools, or the emphasis by a new generation of creative tools on "generating usable results," all point to the same trend: users' expectations of AI are shifting from "tell me how" to "complete it for me." When AI can provide an editable, shareable, and reusable result within 30 seconds, it can more easily achieve real retention. This is why some seemingly unglamorous utility applications instead show greater resilience in monthly active users.

Fourth, vertical scenarios are becoming the breakthrough point for the next round of scaling.

The most striking growth in November did not come exclusively from general assistants, but from high-frequency, essential scenarios such as health and education. They share real needs, repeated use, and low decision costs. Once AI proves "genuinely useful" in these areas, users rarely hesitate repeatedly over migration. General models determine the capability ceiling, but deep understanding and long-term investment in specific scenarios are what usually create real scale.

Fifth, consumer AI is entering "competition among product systems" rather than competition among individual products.

Judging from November's performance, a single blockbuster is increasingly insufficient to explain a company's overall trajectory. More important is whether it has established a clear division of labor among products: how entry points, tools, productivity, creation, and services work together, and whether they cover the complete user journey from life to work. When multiple products appear simultaneously in different parts of the rankings, growth ceases to depend on luck and begins to become sustainable.

Overall, November was not an "AI breakout month" so much as a "month confirming differentiation."

AI applications have passed the stage of "does anyone use them?" and entered the stage of "which ones will users keep over the long term?" In the next several months, competition in the rankings may shift from who grows fastest to who becomes the application users open instinctively. What is truly scarce is no longer model capability, but the right to become the user's default choice.

---

Original publication: https://uniqueresearch.substack.com/p/src-20251217-02html
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/src-20251217-02html