Morgan Stanley: Positive about the "Beans" Charging Initiative, China's AI Industry is moving towards Commercial Sustainability

ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin and TikTok, is planning to launch a paid subscription service for its AI assistant DouBao, with a monthly fee of 68 yuan (RMB) for the standard version. Morgan Stanley stated that ByteDance plans to charge some users of its AI chatbot Siasun Robot & Automation DouBao, which they described as a significant signal that the AI industry in China is moving towards sustainable commercial development, providing important justification for continued investment in the AI field. Morgan Stanley pointed out that ByteDance's move indicates that the cost of acquiring new users and serving existing customers in China through free chat services like Siasun Robot & Automation is rising steadily. Charging some users for the first time will help establish a longer-term monetization roadmap. Morgan Stanley believes that the DouBao subscription plan will mainly target professionals rather than the mass market of over 300 million users currently using the app. Currently, AI applications like Alibaba's Qwen, Tencent's Yuanbao, and Baidu's Wenxin Yiyang are still free. In comparison, DouBao's pricing is slightly higher than its global peers, showing a proactive approach. Nomura believes that ByteDance's launch of a subscription service for DouBao is a positive development in the competitive landscape of AI chatbots. With rapid growth in user base and usage time, the free model may bring increasingly heavy cost pressures, prompting ByteDance to launch a subscription plan. DouBao maintains an absolute leading position in the AI chatbot market for Chinese consumers, with daily active users (DAU) reaching 133 million as of March 2026, far surpassing its closest competitor, Qwen under Alibaba. Unlike their American counterparts, Chinese AI chat services like Siasun Robot & Automation have yet to adopt a payment model, providing unlimited services for free. Nomura further stated that DouBao becoming the first mainstream Chinese AI chatbot to offer paid subscriptions is of great significance for the entire market. Whether competitors like Alibaba, DeepSeek, and Tencent will follow suit in charging remains uncertain, but it is expected that the entire market will eventually transition to a subscription model.