Ant Group, a major Chinese fintech company, has developed an AI application named ‘LingGuang,’ which surpassed one million downloads just four days after its release.
Users are flocking to this feature that allows the AI to create working apps based on sentences provided by the user, to the point of temporarily overwhelming the servers. It has gained market attention by acquiring one million users faster than OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Sora.
Only needing text input to complete an app, LingGuang acts as a ‘personal developer.’
If a user inputs a sentence such as “Create a schedule management app” or “Make an exercise record app,” LingGuang assembles the necessary functions and automatically generates a working application. This technology allows app development without requiring any programming knowledge.
On the evening of the 21st (local time), Ant Group announced through its social media platform Weibo that they temporarily suspended some functions due to traffic overload caused by the surge in users. They promptly took recovery measures and resumed normal service operations.
As of the 23rd, the fourth day after its release, LingGuang holds the first place in China’s mainland free utility section on the Apple App Store and ranks seventh in overall free apps. Ant Group stated, “LingGuang has created a new turning point in the rapidly growing global AI competition.”
The core of LingGuang is its ‘Vibe Coding’ technology.
When a user describes the desired functionality verbally, the AI autonomously writes the code and completes it into an executable program, effectively acting as the user’s ‘personal developer.’
Chief Technology Officer Caiwei, a former Google engineer, said, “Users are interacting with the AI over six times on average to modify detailed functions.” He noted, “This is the first instance where an app can be directly created and edited on a smartphone.”
The trend of ‘Vibe Coding’ is spreading worldwide.
In the U.S., Replit operates a service where AI completes a program if the user inputs code. As of June 2025, Replit’s annual recurring revenue had grown tenfold within a year, from ten million dollars at the end of 2024 to over one hundred million dollars. LingGuang takes this to another level by allowing users to generate finished apps without inputting any code.
‘Chuyuan’ of Alibaba and the AI dominance competition.
Development of LingGuang began this March, overseen by Ant Group’s Chief Technology Officer He Zhengyu, an AI expert with a doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Ant Group established the ‘AGI Lab’ this year as part of a significant increase in AI investment, with objectives to develop their AI models and broaden the application scope of generative AI.
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud division of parent company Alibaba Group, also recently unveiled the AI app ‘Chuyuan.’ Industry experts believe that Chuyuan has great potential to become a prominent platform in China’s AI market.
The release of both apps coincides with Jack Ma’s visit to Ant Group’s Hangzhou campus after a year. Jack Ma previously stated that “an AI-centric technology strategy is the group’s core direction.”
CTO He stated, “The release timing of LingGuang and Chuyuan is a coincidence,” adding that “LingGuang utilizes multiple Chinese open-source AI models, including Chuyuan.” He added, “We are moving together on a shared journey toward AI generalization (AGI).”
AI paving the way for a new industrial landscape.
The success of LingGuang showcases that generative AI is no longer in an experimental stage but is becoming a practical production tool used in daily life. Users convey ideas through text, and AI implements these into actual apps, thus opening a field once restricted to developers to the general public.
China is accelerating its AI industry through collaborations between the government and private sector. The competition between Ant Group and Alibaba is not just a corporate rivalry; it is viewed as a strategic competition for global AI dominance.
The regularization of AI-based app creation is anticipated to considerably reduce development costs for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. Experts predict, “If AI can lower the barriers to coding, the software industry’s structure itself could change.”
Currently, LingGuang is evolving into a multimodal model supporting various inputs such as images and voice, alongside text. It is available for both domestic and international use, with plans for a global version expected in the future.