Ant Group Profit Is Growing Again—But Its US$5.17 Billion AI Gamble Could Decide What Happens Next
BEIJING — Ant Group has returned to year-on-year profit growth, but the modest increase may matter less than the transformation now taking place inside the Chinese fintech giant.
Ant Group, the financial technology affiliate in which Alibaba Group holds a 33% stake, generated an estimated RMB4.7 billion, or about US$698 million, in quarterly profit for the three months ended June 30, 2026, according to Reuters calculations based on Alibaba’s latest earnings disclosure.
That represents an increase of roughly 1% from a year earlier, marking a stabilisation after periods of sharp profit volatility as Ant spent heavily on new technology and growth initiatives.
But investors watching Ant may increasingly be looking beyond the headline profit number.
Ant Group Is Betting Heavily on Artificial Intelligence
Once best known globally for Alipay and its enormous digital-payments ecosystem, Ant is increasingly positioning itself as an artificial intelligence and technology company spanning finance, healthcare and next-generation commerce.
The company has been expanding into areas including agentic commerce, digital healthcare and embodied AI, according to Reuters.
One of its most closely watched projects is AQ, Ant’s AI-powered personal health application, part of a broader effort to use artificial intelligence in consumer healthcare services.
Ant said earlier this year that its spending on AI research and development reached a record US$5.17 billion in 2025, underscoring how aggressively the company is investing in the technology.
The spending also helps explain why Ant’s recent profit numbers have sometimes appeared unusually weak.
In the quarter ended December 2025, for example, Ant’s estimated profit plunged to about RMB1.13 billion, down roughly 79% from a year earlier, as the company increased investment in AI, healthcare, large language models and payment technologies.
That makes the latest return to positive year-on-year growth notable, even if the increase itself is only 1%.
Alibaba’s Earnings Reveal Ant’s Performance With a Delay
Ant Group is privately held, meaning investors do not receive the same standalone quarterly financial reports they would from a listed company.
Instead, analysts can estimate its earnings through Alibaba.
Alibaba owns approximately 33% of Ant Group on a fully diluted basis, according to its fiscal 2026 annual report. Alibaba also records its share of Ant’s results one quarter in arrears, meaning the Ant figures contained in Alibaba’s earnings reports generally relate to an earlier reporting period.
Alibaba itself reported strong growth in its latest quarter, with revenue increasing 9% to RMB268.95 billion, while revenue from its cloud and computing business surged 45% to RMB48.44 billion, fuelled by accelerating demand for artificial intelligence services.
The parallel is striking: both Alibaba and Ant are now pouring money into AI as they search for their next major growth engines.
A Dramatic Turnaround From Ant Group’s Regulatory Crisis
Ant’s current technology push comes several years after one of the most dramatic regulatory interventions in China’s technology industry.
In late 2020, Chinese authorities abruptly halted Ant Group’s planned blockbuster IPO, which had been expected to raise around US$37 billion and potentially become the largest public listing in history.
Regulators subsequently ordered Ant to overhaul large parts of its business, including consumer lending, insurance, credit services and corporate governance.
The restructuring culminated in 2023 when Chinese regulators imposed a roughly RMB7.12 billion fine on Ant for violations involving corporate governance and consumer protection.
The penalty was widely viewed as an important milestone marking the end of the company's prolonged regulatory rectification process.
Since then, Ant has gradually shifted its attention from regulatory survival toward technological expansion.
From Alipay to AI Agents
Ant’s biggest challenge now may be proving that its massive AI spending can eventually produce businesses as influential as the payments empire it built around Alipay.
The company is exploring technologies capable of going beyond traditional chatbots.
So-called agentic AI systems are designed to carry out multi-step tasks on behalf of users, potentially enabling AI assistants to search, compare products, arrange services and complete transactions.
For a company already deeply embedded in digital payments and merchant networks, that could create an important strategic advantage.
If AI agents increasingly become intermediaries between consumers and businesses, Ant could potentially combine artificial intelligence with payments, healthcare, merchant services and financial products inside one ecosystem.
That possibility may ultimately prove far more significant than a single quarter’s profit increase.
The Bigger Question
Ant Group’s latest earnings suggest its core business remains profitable even while management spends aggressively on emerging technologies.
But the real test has only begun.
After regulatory pressure reshaped the company and forced it to rethink its future, Ant is betting billions that artificial intelligence can open an entirely new chapter.
The question investors will now be watching is whether Ant’s AI investments become another enormous business—or simply an extremely expensive experiment.