China’s Singles’ Day shopping festival peaks on Wednesday, November 11, closing a month-long sales marathon in which artificial intelligence, not discounts alone, has been the story of the year. The festival, also known as Double 11, began as a one-day event in 2009 and now runs for weeks across Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall, JD.com, Douyin and Pinduoduo.
Sales growth has been modest. Cumulative sales during the 2026 event reached just over 1 trillion yuan, about $154 billion, by October 31, broadly matching the same period a year earlier, according to estimates from retail data platform Syntun. A separate Syntun measure put sales growth at 2.4% between October 7 and October 31, Reuters reported, and the firm is expected to release updated estimates covering the full event on Thursday, November 12.
AI is the new bestseller
The clearest sign of change came on the night of November 2, when livestream star Li Jiaqi sold 100,000 monthly memberships of Alibaba’s QwenWork office AI service in about 30 minutes on Taobao Live, according to Alibaba via Reuters. Tmall said sales of AI tokens rose more than 700% between October 15 and November 5 compared with the previous three weeks, and sales of AI companion robots rose nearly fivefold year on year in the second half of October.
Shoppers stay cautious
JD.com said its AI shopping assistant, Dongdong, attracted nearly 80 million users seeking advice during this year’s festival, more than three times last year’s figure, Reuters reported. Yet the flat overall sales suggest Chinese consumers remain careful with their money despite the AI hype. Alibaba has not published a total sales figure since 2022, leaving third-party firms such as Syntun to keep the score.
The festival’s new categories show where Chinese spending is heading. AI toys passed 100 million yuan, about $15 million, in sales on Alibaba’s platforms within a year of launching as a new category, the company said, and AI drove roughly 5% of purchases through chatbot links on Douyin in October, according to WPIC Marketing and Technologies. Sales of AI PC laptops jumped more than 300% year on year in the first hour of the main checkout window, which opened on Tmall at 8 p.m. on October 20. Whether the AI excitement can lift overall spending, however, remains to be seen, and Thursday’s full-event tally from Syntun will be the first real test.
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