The chatbot began offering coupons on Friday, allowing users to make in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned e-commerce platforms entirely through chatbot prompts. The initiative marked the first phase of a 3 billion yuan ($433 million) strategy aimed at rapidly expanding Qwen’s user base during China’s annual Spring Festival holiday.
Alibaba has been positioning Qwen as a “one-stop” AI interface, where users can directly access the company’s ecosystem of apps and complete transactions without leaving the chatbot. Since last month, the group has been promoting what it describes as an “Agentic AI” strategy, mirroring approaches used by global peers such as Google, which integrates its Gemini chatbot into services like Maps.
However, the rollout of the coupon campaign has been plagued by technical challenges. Alibaba said that 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the promotion. The surge in activity led to system overloads over the weekend, prompting Qwen to issue a public appeal on Sunday via its official Weibo account, asking users to give the chatbot time to recover.
By Monday, repeated attempts to make purchases through Qwen generated multiple versions of rejection messages citing oversubscription, according to Reuters checks.
“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,” the chatbot replied to one purchase prompt on Monday.
Qwen added that affected users would still be able to redeem their coupons, which remain valid until February 28, despite the temporary suspension of new coupon issuance.
Alibaba declined to comment further on the technical difficulties surrounding the campaign.
The incident underscores both the growing consumer interest in AI-driven commerce in China and the operational challenges facing companies as they scale new, integrated AI services at speed during peak shopping periods.