About two weeks before the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, the "smoke of gunpowder" is gradually rising among technology giants. On February 1st, Tencent's Yuanbao App launched a 1 billion yuan red envelope campaign for the Spring Festival. As of the time of press release, Yuanbao has exceeded ByteDance's Doubao to the first place in the free app list of Apple Store. If the previous red envelope war was a marketing game of "throwing money for traffic", then the 2026 Spring Festival red envelope war has evolved into a strategic card battle with AI as the core engine, competing for the next generation of traffic super entrance. Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance, the four major technology giants, have entered the market with billion yuan of resources, pushing AI into a new stage of ecological competition. On January 25th, Tencent took the lead in launching the first shot in the red envelope war, announcing that its Yuanbao App will distribute 1 billion yuan in cash red envelopes, with a maximum amount of 10000 yuan per red envelope, and can be directly withdrawn to WeChat for change. This event will last from February 1st to February 17th, featuring various forms of red envelopes such as 10000 yuan pony cards, cash red envelopes, and shared red envelopes. Tencent's event has a strong goal of promoting and popularizing AI applications. Users can log in to the Yuanbao App every day to receive cash red envelopes, unlock lottery opportunities by completing tasks such as AI conversations, and have a chance to win a limited edition of 100 cash pony cards worth 10000 yuan. On January 26th, Tencent Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng expressed at an internal staff meeting that he hopes this move can recreate the WeChat red envelope moment of 11 years ago. Baidu also quickly joined the red envelope war, offering 500 million yuan in red envelope benefits and deeply linking the red envelope gameplay with its AI product Wenxin Assistant. Baidu stated that the event will last from January 26th to March 12th, and users can receive red envelopes by experiencing nearly 200 AI special effects of the "Fantasy Life" storyline. In the four rounds of card collection activities, the top 1000 players who collect rare cards such as "Get Rich Now" will receive a prize of ten thousand yuan. Alibaba and ByteDance have chosen other marketing methods. For example, Alibaba's Qianwen App has acquired the exclusive naming rights for Bilibili's New Year's Eve Gala, integrating AIGC's creative capabilities into multiple interactive segments of the gala. ByteDance's volcanic engine will become the exclusive AI cloud partner of the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Although the strategies of the four giants have their own focuses, their strategic goals are highly consistent - to promote the sinking of AI technology from abstract concepts to everyday applications within the reach of the public through key time nodes covering all ages and scenarios. Some analysts say that the special feature of the 2026 Spring Festival red envelope battle is that AI has moved from behind the scenes to the front stage for the first time, becoming the core engine driving user participation. For the next generation of super portals, from payment platforms to short video platforms, almost every round of Internet traffic restructuring in the past decade will be accompanied by the Spring Festival red envelope war. It's just that this round of red packet war is not a simple short-term innovation. At the moment when mobile Internet traffic has peaked, technology giants hope to use AI to find new traffic portals and open up new growth curves. It is widely expected in the industry that in the future, universal AI agents will be able to aggregate more vertical applications, and each user may only need a few AI agents to meet all online needs. This means that the traffic portal pattern in the Internet era may be broken. Whoever can seize the traffic portal in the AI era will be able to control the distribution of digital traffic in the next decade. Citigroup stated in its latest research report that this red envelope battle is not just a simple Spring Festival promotion, but more like an important verification window for China's AI assistants to move towards a turning point in national level applications. The essence of Spring Festival red envelopes is not the subsidy amount, but "forcing users to form AI usage paths". As long as users rely on high-frequency use for 7-10 days, retention after the festival may be significantly higher than that of historical Internet products. Goldman Sachs also made it clear in the research paper that 2026 will be a key strategic turning point for China's Internet giants, AI investment in the consumer oriented field will continue to increase, and the competition to build an AI super portal will become increasingly fierce. At present, ByteDance's Doubao App is the most popular AI application on the C-end in China. It is disclosed that Doubao has reached 163 million monthly live, and Alibaba's Qianwen App has also achieved 100 million monthly live. Tencent and Baidu both hope to catch up through the Spring Festival red envelope campaign and further seize the user mentality and market share in the field of AI applications. A Spring Festival red envelope battle may not directly determine the winner. The smoke of war has dissipated, and the real competition has just begun - the protracted battle over the AI ecosystem has begun. Citigroup believes that this is the first nationwide, real user density stress test, and whether it can maintain high daily activity and frequency of use after the holiday will become a watershed in distinguishing between "tool based AI" and "platform level AI". (New Society)