At the shareholders' meeting held at Hengdian Building, the headquarters of Meituan in Beijing, Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, systematically explained the company's strategic layout and development plan in the field of artificial intelligence for the first time, revealing the deep thinking and bold practice of Meituan in the AI wave.
Wang Xing divided Meituan's AI development into different stages. In the early stage, the company had already applied deep neural network algorithms in its food delivery routing and dispatching systems. The current stage focuses on the development and deployment of large language models and their derivative applications.
In the face of fierce competition in the AI field, Meituan has made large-scale investments over the past three years. Wang Xing frankly admitted that hardware investment was particularly huge, saying, "Graphics cards are very expensive and hard to get, and data centers also need to be prepared in advance." In terms of talent acquisition, due to the extreme scarcity of top AI talents, compensation levels have been pushed to new highs, making talent acquisition and retention a major challenge.
No Code Revolution: Let Non-Programmers Code
One of the highlights of Meituan's AI applications is the No Code platform developed internally. This platform allows more than 20,000 R&D personnel in the company, including product managers, UI designers, business analysts, even HR and finance personnel, to complete programming work with AI assistance.
Wang Xing emphasized that the core value of No Code lies in achieving "0 to 1" breakthroughs, enabling employees who are not good at programming to independently develop applications. "As long as he has an idea, AI can automatically help him generate code," which greatly enhances the overall innovation capability and work efficiency of the team.
Currently, Meituan has opened the No Code platform free of charge to the public, and there are 1,680 applications officially released and available for free use on the platform.
Rational View of the AI Development Cycle: Overestimate in the Short Term, Underestimate in the Long Term
Regarding the development prospects of AI technology, Wang Xing demonstrated a mature strategic mindset. He quoted a classic view, pointing out that people often "overestimate what can happen in one or two years, but underestimate what can change in ten years."
Wang Xing believed that although ChatGPT has been released for two and a half years, AI has made significant progress, but compared to the revolutionary impact of early smartphones, it has not fundamentally changed people's lifestyles. However, from a ten-year perspective, AI will bring earth-shaking changes.
Financial Consideration: Short-term Pressure, Long-term Benefits
Talking about the impact of AI investment on the company's financial performance, Wang Xing showed a calm commercial judgment. He clearly stated that the huge investment in AI in the short term "is not necessarily positive," and shareholders need to maintain patience. But from a long-term perspective, he firmly believes that technological strength will ultimately enhance productivity and better serve Meituan's mission of "helping everyone eat better and live better."
This statement reflects the long-term strategic thinking of Meituan's management on AI technology and its candid communication with shareholders. In the current AI investment craze, Meituan has chosen a rational investment and practical application development path, aiming to maintain a leading position in technical competition while balancing short-term financial pressure with long-term strategic goals.
Meituan's AI strategy shows the deep thinking of a mature tech company in the new technology wave: it needs to boldly invest to seize opportunities while rationally planning to avoid blind following. This may provide valuable reference for other companies' AI layouts.
