JD's AI Shopping Assistant Drew Nearly 80 Million Singles Day Users

JD.com's AI shopping assistant Dongdong drew nearly 80 million users seeking Singles Day advice this year, more than triple last year's figure, the company said, as China's largest shopping festival turned into a working test of chatbots that recommend and purchase products on shoppers' behalf. Reuters reported the numbers on Nov. 11.

The scale matters because of where it happens. China's super apps let shoppers research, pay and book deliveries without ever leaving the app. That structure gives the platforms hosting the AI agents considerable sway over what actually gets bought — a shift with direct consequences for brands and merchants.

How big was the AI pull?

Dongdong's roughly 80 million users stand out against an otherwise sluggish festival. Syntun, a third-party data platform, said total Singles Day sales rose just 2.4% between Oct. 7 and Oct. 31. The firm plans to publish a full-event figure on Thursday.

Alibaba, for its part, released figures on AI products rather than on its own agents. Its disclosures included:

• AI toys passed 100 million yuan in sales on its platforms within a year of becoming a product category.
• Sales of AI companion robots rose nearly fivefold year on year in the second half of October, though Alibaba gave no unit counts.
• Tmall, Alibaba's marketplace, said AI token sales jumped more than 700% between Oct. 15 and Nov. 5, compared with Sept. 15 to Oct. 5.

One livestream signal stood apart. Austin Li, one of China's best-known livestream sellers, sold 100,000 monthly subscriptions to Alibaba's QwenWork in 30 minutes — the first time he had featured AI products in a stream.

What does chatbot-driven buying change?

On Douyin, chatbot links drove about 5% of October purchases, according to data from WPIC Marketing + Technologies. For considered purchases — items shoppers deliberate over, such as supplements — the share exceeded 20%.

"This is still a very new gateway and discovery channel," WPIC Chief Executive Jacob Cooke said of the pattern.

The numbers are early. The risk for brands is not. Ben Cavender of China Market Research Group said brands can lose visibility depending on how platforms tune their assistants, if AI ends up doing the shopping for consumers. When an assistant filters, ranks and orders, the shelf fight moves from the storefront to the model.

That dynamic cuts both ways. Platforms gain leverage over discovery and conversion inside their closed loops. Brands face a new intermediary they neither control nor fully see, one whose recommendation logic can quietly reshape demand across categories.

What comes next?

For now, the confirmed figures are JD's 80 million Dongdong users, Alibaba's category milestones and Syntun's 2.4% growth through Oct. 31. The full-event number lands Thursday, and it will show whether chatbot-assisted commerce lifted a festival that otherwise grew only modestly — or simply redirected it.