Ant Group Bets on AI Healthcare in 480 Billion Yuan Sector Race
Ant Group Bets on AI Healthcare in 480 Billion Yuan Sector Race
Synopsis- Ant Group is accelerating its push into AI-powered healthcare as a core growth engine beyond payments.
- The company is deploying AI Doctor Agents in a Chinese online healthcare market valued at 480 billion yuan in 2025.
- Competition and monetisation risks remain significant in a sector crowded with Tencent, DeepSeek, Ping An and Alibaba affiliates.
Roughly five years after shelving a record-breaking initial public offering, Jack Ma-backed Ant Group is pursuing a markedly different growth strategy: artificial intelligence-driven healthcare.
According to a Bloomberg report carried by The Business Times, the financial technology giant has transformed from a digital payments pioneer into one of China’s most aggressive investors in medical AI. The company is backing software systems that answer patient queries and connect users to doctors, pharmacies and insurers, repositioning healthcare as a central pillar of its long-term expansion.
In November, Ant elevated its healthcare division to the same strategic tier as Alipay and its lending operations, underscoring the scale of its ambitions. After years focused on consumer lending, wealth management and insurance technology, executives now see AI-enabled healthcare as the next major lever of growth, aiming to leverage the company’s vast user ecosystem to build its largest business outside payments.
Zhang Junjie, who heads Ant’s healthcare unit, said the company intends to reach the majority of China’s 1.4 billion people with AI-driven health services within three years.
“In our first decade, Ant focused on making payments easier. The second was about inclusive finance. Now, we hope helping people live healthier lives can be the driver for the next decade,” Zhang said.
At the centre of this strategy are AI Doctor Agents—digital avatars trained by physicians to handle routine patient inquiries. The Chinese online healthcare market was estimated at 480 billion yuan (S$88 billion) annually in 2025, according to research firm AskCI. Each avatar draws on a doctor’s expertise to respond to common medical questions.
Yet the opportunity comes with clear risks. As Bloomberg noted, China’s digital health sector is littered with companies that scaled rapidly but struggled to generate sustainable profits. Competition is intensifying, with Tencent Holdings and AI model developer DeepSeek expanding into healthcare. Ant also faces established rivals such as Ping An Healthcare and Technology, as well as competition from its affiliate Alibaba Group Holding.
While Ant has invested hundreds of millions of US dollars into digital healthcare, it has not disclosed revenue or profit figures for the segment. Its pivot mirrors a broader shift at Alibaba, the other conglomerate founded by Ma, which is betting heavily on generative AI in competition with firms such as OpenAI and DeepSeek.
“Past tech giants’ Internet health pursuits often failed to find a profitable model beyond selling advertisements or health products,” said Ming Yii Lai, senior consultant at Daxue Consulting. “Achieving sustainable monetisation will be the key.”
By 2024, roughly 400 million Chinese had used digital healthcare services, as platforms linking hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and insurers became increasingly embedded in the healthcare ecosystem.
Ant holds a significant early advantage. Alipay began processing hospital payments more than a decade ago, and over 800 million users have linked their basic medical insurance details to the app, enabling digital bill settlement.
Last June, Ant introduced an AI-powered health app called AQ, designed to aggregate health data and answer general medical questions. The app also functions as a gateway to broader services, allowing users to schedule consultations, purchase prescription drugs and pay using insurance through Alipay.
Rather than diagnosing illnesses directly, AQ routes users to a network of more than 5,000 hospitals and 300,000 licensed physicians. While similar services exist from competitors including Ping An, AQ’s integration with Alipay has driven rapid adoption. Since early December, it has ranked as the most-downloaded medical app on Apple’s iPhones in China, according to research platform Diandian.com.
Ant’s most ambitious initiative lies in AQ’s Doctor Agents. More than 1,000 doctors have helped train the avatars, which can address common concerns, flag urgent cases for human review and compile patient histories prior to in-person appointments.
Last year alone, these avatars handled over 27 million inquiries, according to Ant. Shanghai obstetrician-gynaecologist Duan Tao, who typically consults about 20 patients each morning, said his digital counterpart responded to more than 700,000 questions from 160,000 individuals within six months.
Doctors train their avatars using written answers, social media videos, clinical notes, audio recordings and filmed consultations. Patient identities are anonymised to safeguard privacy. Physicians review the cases assembled by their digital counterparts and intervene when necessary. The model, however, raises sensitive ethical questions around accountability.
“Diagnosis and prescriptions must remain human decisions,” said Fan Haining, a liver specialist who uses the system to extend services to patients in Qinghai, a remote western province with limited specialist access. “The responsibility always lies with the doctor.”
User adoption appears robust. AQ reports approximately 30 million monthly active users who submit about 10 million health-related questions each day. Ant maintains that the system is intended to reduce administrative workload and streamline consultations rather than replace physicians.
The company says its AI models are trained on curated medical datasets rather than scraped internet material, drawing from clinical reports, medical imagery and pharmaceutical data. An internal ethics committee oversees development and deployment.
China counts about five million doctors, with substantial disparities in training and expertise across regions. “If AI can help standardise basic care, that could be beneficial,” said David Feng, chief executive of Hangzhou-based healthcare information startup NoCode, which collaborates with Chinese internet firms.
Ant’s renewed healthcare push echoes earlier efforts by Ma’s business empire. In the mid-2010s, Alibaba and peers invested heavily in online health platforms, though many struggled to achieve profitability. Haodf.com, once a leading online medical service, was later acquired by Ant at a steep discount to its peak valuation, according to sources cited in the Bloomberg report. WeDoctor, another early player, has faced repeated challenges in public listing attempts.
The policy environment is now more supportive. Over the past two years, China has issued detailed guidance encouraging broader medical AI applications, outlining potential use cases, promoting data sharing and exploring reimbursement frameworks.
Online pharmacy sales, previously suspended, climbed from 19 billion yuan in 2020 to an estimated 87 billion yuan in 2025, according to AskCI. Digital healthcare development has been embedded in long-term government policy priorities.
Alibaba Health has benefited from this shift, buoyed by surging online drug sales. After years of losses, it has returned to profitability and reported profit growth exceeding 60 per cent since 2024, suggesting that the digital health model long championed by Ma is gaining traction. Alibaba Health, affiliated with Ant, is controlled by Alibaba, which owns a one-third stake in Ant.
Whether Ant can replicate that trajectory remains uncertain.
“Competition is so fierce in China. Just because one app and product is at the top for now doesn’t mean it lasts,” said Ruby Wang, founder of consultancy Lintris Health. “Everything it’s got, other companies – you can bet they are copying it as fast as they can. So how long it’s going to stay in the top position, I think it’s only a matter of time.”
Source: The Business Times – Have a Story? Address it to the Editor and submit it here
About Ant Group
Ant Group is a Chinese financial technology company originally founded as the operator of Alipay, the digital payments platform created within Alibaba’s ecosystem. Backed by billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma, Ant expanded beyond payments into consumer lending, wealth management and insurance technology, building one of the largest fintech user bases in the world. After a planned initial public offering was halted amid regulatory scrutiny, the company entered a period of restructuring and strategic recalibration. Today, Ant is positioning artificial intelligence as a core growth engine, investing heavily in healthcare technology, digital finance infrastructure and global expansion initiatives. Its ecosystem includes hundreds of millions of users linked to medical insurance, payment services and financial products. Alibaba Group holds a one-third stake in Ant, while affiliated entities such as Alibaba Health operate within the broader digital healthcare landscape the company is seeking to shape.
Featured image Source: The Business Times
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