AIBRIEF
China's biggest payments app is dangling a 10 million yuan ($1.4M) annual prize at outside developers to fill its 1 billion user AI assistant with everyday services, betting a super app can host a third party AI agent ecosystem.
Alipay will pay outside developers up to 1 million yuan (~$140,000) a year to build consumer AI helpers for daily life, under a new annual prize program unveiled Wednesday at the 2026 Inclusion Bund Conference. Registration opens September 10, with the first grand-prize round closing in Q4 2027.
The "智能体涌现奖" (Agent Emergence Award) commits 10 million yuan (~$1.4M) a year, with a 1 million yuan grand prize and quarterly shortlists in between, per coverage from 雷锋网 (Lei Phone) and IT之家. Two tracks are open: "生活好帮手" (Life Helper) for individual developers serving personal needs, and "消费新体验" (New Consumption Experience) for merchants upgrading business scenarios.
They can use natural-language VibeCoding platforms like Qmuse, while merchant developers plug into the Alipay AI open platform. A "wishing" mechanism lets ordinary Alipay users submit real needs; selected ones become a quarterly "金点子奖" (Golden Idea Award) worth 2,000 yuan (~$280).
Mature works land in "阿宝" (Abao), Alipay's AI assistant, which the company says already reaches 1 billion users and has cross-device integrations with 5 phone brands and 16 car brands, with designated partnerships covering 60+ car OEMs, per 界面 (Jiemian).
The lead example: Starbucks' "Coffee Alarm," a daily 10 a.m. auto-order that runs on Abao's new async-task capability. Whether 10 million yuan a year, modest by global AI-funding standards, can seed a third-party agent ecosystem on a payments super-app is the question the program is built to test.