Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance intensify integration of AI office products

Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are aggressively reorganizing their structures and integrating products to intensify their competition in the AI office space. Alibaba has launched Qwen Office, consolidating three Agent products—QoderWork, Wukong, and MuleRun—under the leadership of DingTalk’s new CEO, Chen Yusen. Tencent’s WorkBuddy has stood out, achieving 20.97 million desktop monthly visits in June, ranking first and surpassing the combined total of the second and third places; Ma Huateng places high importance on this project, advancing it internally as a “super project.” ByteDance is advancing multiple product lines including Feishu, TRAE, and Doubao, with internal discussions underway on integration strategies. AI technology is evolving from Copilot’s “Q&A” to Agent-based “working on behalf of users,” making office software the core battleground for tech giants competing to own the next-generation enterprise entry point.

Article author and source: 36Kr

AI-powered office tools are becoming the new frontier in the big tech companies' AI competition.

Recently, major tech companies have been actively reorganizing and integrating their AI-powered office products.

Alibaba has launched Qwen Office, integrating three Agent products—QoderWork, Wukong, and MuleRun—under the leadership of DingTalk’s newly appointed CEO, Chen Yusen. Tencent continues to invest heavily in its AI-powered office agent, WorkBuddy, accelerating its market promotion efforts and recently reportedly merging the QClaw-related team into the WorkBuddy system. ByteDance is advancing multiple product lines including Feishu, TRAE, and Doubao, while internal discussions on potential integration strategies have also emerged.

Meanwhile, an initial market landscape has emerged. According to Analysys’s “China Office Agent Platform Market Research Report 2026,” in June 2026, the monthly visits to 17 leading domestic AI-native office agent platforms exceeded 60 million. Among them, Tencent WorkBuddy ranked first with 20.97 million visits, surpassing the combined total of the second and third-ranked platforms.

According to insiders, Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, places great importance on the WorkBuddy project and rarely misses any WorkBuddy product meetings; internally, it is being advanced as a "super project."

AI technology is evolving from text-based conversations to Agent forms that act on behalf of users, pushing the once-stagnant office software industry to the forefront of industrial transformation.

Unlike the previous phase, where AI was used as a patch in traditional office software, the 2026 AI office battle sparked by Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance has evolved into a competition over human-computer interaction interfaces.

This year, Tencent has continued to increase its investment in WorkBuddy.

From social platforms like Xiaohongshu and Douyin to office building elevators and overseas social platform X, Tencent is increasingly boosting WorkBuddy’s visibility. Particularly in elevator advertising, WorkBuddy has partnered with Focus Media to launch targeted ads for office workers, with the slogan: “For AI-powered office agents, choose Tencent WorkBuddy”—directly addressing office scenarios.

Few people know that this product began as a 10-person team at Tencent Cloud focused on building an AI code assistant.

Three years ago, when large models became wildly popular, Wang Shengjie, head of the WorkBuddy team, repeatedly tried to secure an opportunity for Tencent’s AI code assistant to be showcased at events like the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, but the usual response was no.

Until 2026, "Lobster" went viral, forcing WorkBuddy to complete infrastructure reconstruction within a week to support remote control and integration with the Lobster ecosystem, migrating from a standalone web application to the full infrastructure of CodeBuddy, transitioning from beta to public release. In January of this year, the initial version of WorkBuddy was launched, followed by the subsequent releases of a mini-program version, an international version, and an enterprise version.

WorkBuddy can not only perform tasks such as information retrieval, document writing, and data analysis, but also invoke various tools to enable cross-application collaboration, gradually gaining the ability to execute complete workflows.

By binding WeChat, users can also send tasks from their mobile phones to their computers, which will autonomously execute tasks such as retrieving files across applications, organizing data, and even taking control of software, then send the results back via WeChat.

With the support of its product and marketing efforts, WorkBuddy achieved rapid growth, allowing Tencent to regain an edge in the new round of competition for AI entry points.

In its Q1 financial report, Tencent stated that WorkBuddy has become China’s most popular AI productivity agent service by daily active accounts. According to Analysys’s “China Office Agent Platform Market Research Report 2026,” in June 2026, Tencent WorkBuddy ranked first in the industry with 20.97 million monthly desktop visits, surpassing the combined total of the second- and third-ranked platforms. Additionally, Tencent’s Q1 2026 financial report revealed that WorkBuddy’s active user retention rate exceeded 60%, and its paying user retention rate surpassed 80%.

As the user base grows rapidly, Tencent is placing increasing emphasis on WorkBuddy.

Recent reports indicate that Tencent has relocated the QClaw product center’s operations and certain teams to Cloud Product Division Six, placing them under the same management structure as the AI-powered office agent, WorkBuddy. Internally at Tencent, WorkBuddy is regarded as a major initiative with the potential to become the third phenomenon-level product after QQ and WeChat.

Ma Huateng, founder, chairman of the board, and CEO of Tencent, places great importance on the WorkBuddy project and rarely misses any WorkBuddy product meetings; internally, it is being advanced as a "super project."

If QQ defined the social gateway of the PC era, and WeChat defined the super gateway of the mobile internet era, then WorkBuddy represents Tencent’s latest bet on the gateway of the AI era.

QQ connects people to people, WeChat connects people to services, and WorkBuddy aims to connect people to agents. As more tasks are accomplished by agents, the first window people open on their computers each day may no longer be a browser or Office, but an intelligent agent that understands their needs, invokes tools, and delivers results.

Besides Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba are also increasing their investment in AI-powered office tools.

According to the "China Office Agent Platform Market Research Report 2026" released by Analysys, in June 2026, the total visits to 17 leading desktop-native AI office agent platforms exceeded 60 million.

Breaking it down, Tencent’s portfolio (WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy, QClaw, and Marvis) totals 32.62 million users, accounting for more than half of the overall market; ByteDance’s offerings (TRAE IDE China version and Koi) total approximately 14.41 million; Alibaba’s suite (QoderWork and Wukong) totals around 9.19 million—the lowest among the three.

Although currently lagging behind Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance have recently begun reorganizing their structures and integrating product resources to accelerate their entry into the AI office market.

In June of this year, Chen Hang, founder and former CEO of DingTalk, stepped down, and Chen Yusen officially took over as the new CEO of DingTalk. This marks DingTalk’s second leadership change in 15 months, and Chen Yusen’s succession—a 90s-born tech enthusiast—has been viewed by outsiders as a signal of Alibaba’s strategic shift in the enterprise services sector.

Over the past few years, Alibaba has incubated multiple AI agent products internally: QoderWork targets AI-powered programming, Wukong focuses on enterprise office productivity, and MuleRun provides agent development and workflow capabilities. Although these products cover areas such as R&D, office productivity, and AI agent platforms, they have long developed independently and have yet to form a unified enterprise AI entry point.

Within a week of taking office, Chen Yusen initiated the integration of Wukong with MuleRun. In early July, QoderWork was further incorporated into the unified sequence and placed under Chen Yusen’s overall coordination.

On July 27, Qwen Office quietly launched its beta testing, with the desktop version now live; the web version and the built-in DingTalk version will follow in subsequent releases. Qwen Office integrates three intelligent agent products—QoderWork, Wukong, and MuleRun—and is defined as Alibaba Cloud and DingTalk’s flagship SaaS offering, set to become Alibaba’s premier product in the agent-powered office market.

For Alibaba, the internal competition among AI office products has concluded. As agents enter the commercialization phase, it makes more sense to unify the entry point and concentrate resources on a single product.

ByteDance's AI office currently has multiple pathways.

First is Feishu. In March this year, Feishu held a new product launch, with core upgrades centered on Feishu Aily, Feishu Miaoda, and Multi-dimensional Tables Agent. It also introduced supporting tools such as the OpenClaw official plugin and Feishu CLI, forming a complete ecosystem of Assistant Agent, Development Agent, and Data Agent.

Second is TRAE. TRAE was originally a programming tool—an AI-native IDE launched by ByteDance—that gained traction among developers through optimization for Chinese-language scenarios and a free pricing strategy. However, in June this year, ByteDance officially renamed TRAE SOLO to TRAE Work, shifting its positioning from a developer-exclusive tool to an enterprise-wide AI-powered productivity platform, expanding its scope beyond coding to encompass broader workplace productivity use cases.

Additionally, there is DouBao’s office workflow. In June this year, DouBao, under ByteDance, officially launched DouBao Pro, designed for productivity scenarios. Its key feature is the new “Office Task” Agent mode powered by the flagship DouBao Large Model 2.1 Pro, aimed at providing professionals, creators, and developers with localized and automated capabilities for handling complex tasks.

However, ByteDance internally is already discussing related integration plans.

Although their paths differ, Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are all doing the same thing: ending the era of parallel exploration of multiple products in the large model era and re-integrating fragmented AI capabilities into a unified office entry point.

Tencent is concentrating its resources on WorkBuddy, Alibaba is integrating to create Qwen Office, and ByteDance is also expected to launch an integrated solution. Compared to the previous phase, which focused on competing over model parameters, the current battleground has shifted to who can be the first to establish a new entry point for office productivity in the AI era.

From WorkBuddy’s “Super Project,” to Alibaba’s “Qwen Office,” and now ByteDance’s Feishu, TRAE, and DouBao’s multi-pronged initiatives, the office software market, once considered a mature sector, is rapidly becoming the most intense battleground for tech giants.

On the surface, this appears to be a competition among several AI productivity products; but more deeply, it is a battle over the next-generation enterprise entry point. As AI begins to move beyond answering questions to actually doing work for users, the role of productivity software is also evolving.

Over the past two years, the dominant form of AI in office productivity has been Copilot, which functions more like a co-pilot beside an employee, handling single-point tasks such as writing documents, creating presentations, and summarizing meetings. However, starting in 2026, an increasing number of products are shifting toward the Agent format.

Unlike Copilot, which performs only a single action, an Agent is more like an employee. It can understand goals, autonomously break them down into steps, and invoke multiple tools—such as search, documents, spreadsheets, browsers, and knowledge bases—to continuously execute tasks until the result is delivered.

Tasks that previously required employees to switch between browsers, Office, WeCom, and knowledge bases now have the potential to be completed independently by AI.

Compared to the consumer market, enterprise office environments have several inherent advantages.

First, standardize the scenario.

Regardless of how the industry changes, most businesses repeat similar tasks daily, such as researching information, drafting proposals, preparing reports, analyzing data, scheduling meetings, approving processes, and collaborating on projects. These tasks naturally follow fixed workflows and are more easily learned and automated by AI.

Second, the data is sufficiently rich.

Enterprises generate vast amounts of documents, contracts, reports, emails, chat logs, and meeting minutes every day. These accumulated knowledge assets over the years form the foundation for Agents to understand the enterprise and carry out tasks. Compared to open internet information, internal enterprise data is more precise and holds greater business value.

More importantly, businesses are willing to pay for improved efficiency.

For individual users, an AI product may merely improve work efficiency slightly; however, for enterprises, if an agent can replace part of the repetitive labor, shorten business processes, and reduce communication costs, the value generated will directly manifest as cost savings and increased productivity. As a result, office work has become one of the most promising AI applications today for achieving a commercial闭环.

Commercialization signals have begun to emerge. Feishu has experienced rapid growth this year, with AI considered a key driver. In the second quarter of 2026, Feishu's revenue increased by over 100% year-over-year, marking the highest commercial growth rate on record. More than 90% of new customers this year also purchased Feishu’s AI products.

Meanwhile, unlike previous internet products that often attracted users with free models, WorkBuddy and Qwen Office have established clear paid pricing structures since their launch.

For example, WorkBuddy Personal Edition offers four tiers: free trial, ¥99/month, ¥199/month, and ¥999/month. The Enterprise Edition has two tiers: ¥198/person/month and ¥316/person/month. Qwen Office Personal Edition offers three tiers: free, ¥98, and ¥198, with continuous monthly subscription prices of ¥78 and ¥158. The Enterprise Standard Edition is ¥198/month/seat, and the Enterprise Flagship Edition is available upon request.

In fact, global tech companies are almost all evolving in the same direction.

Microsoft has deeply integrated Copilot into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams, aiming to make AI a default capability within the Office suite; Google continues to advance Gemini into Workspace. The competitive direction in the international market is clear: in the future, enterprises will not just be purchasing office software, but AI capabilities that actively participate in work.

Therefore, the domestic market has also begun to follow the same development pace.

Unlike the previous round of large model competition, which primarily focused on model parameters and reasoning capabilities, this round of AI office competition places greater emphasis on a company’s existing software ecosystem and organizational capabilities. As model capabilities gradually converge, enterprise data, business processes, organizational relationships, and office entry points have become the key factors determining whether agents can be successfully deployed.

Thus, we see that major tech companies have recently begun aligning their organizational structures, integrating products, and enhancing office setups. The company that can first embed AI into daily enterprise workflows will have the opportunity to become the next-generation digital infrastructure for businesses—and this is precisely why Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and others are all heavily investing in AI-powered office solutions.