Meituan's market value evaporates by HKD 2.2 trillion: its dominance in the food delivery market is shaken, with market share dropping below 50%. Its first AI browser, Tabbit, is embroiled in a plagiarism controversy.

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Produced by: Sina Finance Listed Company Research Institute

Author: cici

Since October 2024, Meituan’s stock price has been volatile and declining. As of the close on March 13, 2026, Meituan’s stock price is HKD 75.95 per share, with a market value of only HKD 468.9 billion, down nearly HKD 2.2 trillion from its peak of over HKD 2.6 trillion. A company’s market value often reflects investor expectations for its future development. Why has Meituan’s market value continued to fluctuate downward? What factors have influenced investor expectations?

(Source: Wind Information)

2025 may be a challenging year for Meituan, with full-year net losses reaching between RMB 23.3 billion and RMB 24.3 billion. To counter JD.com’s aggressive “zero commission + billion-yuan subsidies” strategy, Meituan was forced into a trillion-yuan subsidy war, yet still failed to hold its ground. Its market share dropped from over 70% at its peak to about 48%. Alibaba’s “Taobao Flash Sale” and JD.com’s food delivery captured 33% and 19% of the market share respectively, completely rewriting the old pattern of “one super, many strong” in the food delivery market.

While its core business faces pressure, Meituan’s AI strategy also encountered setbacks. On March 2, its Guangnian Outside team launched the first AI-native browser, Tabbit, aiming to seize the next-generation intelligent portal. However, within less than 24 hours, it was publicly accused by independent developers of plagiarism, with embedded translation plugin source code still containing original project filenames. Although the team quickly apologized and removed the feature, the controversy exposed strategic anxiety and technical shortcomings in Meituan’s AI deployment.

Is the moat gone? The food delivery market position shaken, market share falling below 50%, with losses exceeding RMB 20 billion in 2025

On February 13, 2026, Meituan issued a profit warning, estimating a net loss of RMB 23.3 billion to RMB 24.3 billion for 2025. Its core local commerce division, once a “cash cow,” turned from profit to loss, with operating losses of RMB 6.8 billion to RMB 7 billion. From a profit of RMB 35.8 billion to a loss of over RMB 20 billion, this stark result reveals intense competition in the instant retail sector over the past year.

In February 2025, JD.com entered the food delivery market as a new player, with a strategy of “zero commission + billion-yuan subsidies + rider social security,” aggressively expanding into the sector. This forced established players like Meituan and Alibaba to respond swiftly, elevating “Meituan Flash Sale” and “Taobao Flash Sale” to strategic priorities, sparking a summer subsidy war involving over RMB 100 billion, pushing peak daily instant retail orders to an astonishing 200 million.

The core reason for the massive losses in 2025, according to Meituan’s announcement, was the intense food delivery war. To maintain market share, Meituan increased investments across all fronts: on the consumer side, strengthening marketing, brand influence, and price competitiveness; on the delivery side, incentivizing riders and enhancing their benefits to ensure service quality and user experience; on the merchant side, continuously investing resources to improve operational efficiency, expand consumer coverage, and iterate business models, achieving steady growth.

(Source: Company announcement)

Despite the heavy spending, Meituan failed to maintain its market share. According to UserTracker’s multi-platform web user behavior monitoring data, by Q4 2025, Meituan’s food delivery market share had fallen from over 70% at its peak to about 48%. Alibaba, through integration of “Taobao Flash Sale,” captured 33%, while JD.com’s aggressive year-long push gained nearly 19%, successfully entering the core of the market. The old pattern of “one super, many strong” in food delivery was completely rewritten.

In 2026, competition in instant retail will only intensify. JD.com announced plans to expand into in-store pickup and group buying, focusing on Qixian Xiaochu, with a clear goal of surpassing 30% market share in 2026. Data shows that Qixian Xiaochu’s stores, three months after opening, average over 500 orders per day, with JD aiming to complete full coverage of first- and second-tier cities by the end of 2026. Moving from “food delivery” to a “multi-scenario dining ecosystem,” JD is shifting from flank attack to frontal assault.

Compared to JD’s tactical offensive, Alibaba’s strategic focus in instant retail is clearer—its core management has explicitly stated: “No losses within three years.” Alibaba founder Jack Ma once said internally, “Taobao Flash Sale is a milestone campaign for the group.” This indicates that Alibaba’s investment in instant retail has been elevated to the highest strategic priority. Meanwhile, Taobao Flash Sale’s 2026 strategy is more refined: focusing on high-value orders over RMB 30 in food delivery to move away from a pure “burn money for volume” model; in instant retail, prioritizing categories like pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and fresh produce, each with annual sales exceeding RMB 100 billion.

From “burning money” to “long-term consumption,” competition in the instant retail arena will only escalate in 2026. In 2025, Meituan’s market share fell below 50%. JD.com set a target of over 30% market share in 2026, while Alibaba, despite losses, regards Taobao Flash Sale as a milestone campaign. Under these circumstances, whether the struggling Meituan can hold onto nearly 50% of the market remains uncertain. The battle in instant retail in 2026 is far from over.

Is AI a threat or opportunity? The “first black” AI browser Tabbit faces plagiarism controversy

Before the 2026 Spring Festival, Alibaba’s Qianwen app launched a “RMB 3 billion free order” milk tea campaign, sweeping the internet. Within nine hours, it exceeded 10 million orders and topped the App Store free charts. When users asked Qianwen the same questions, it directly called the Taobao Flash Sale interface, completing product selection, ordering, payment, and delivery—all without opening any food delivery app or making any choices.

This appears to be a user competition in AI applications, but in reality, it’s a Trojan horse aimed at Meituan’s core—when users get used to completing the entire ordering and payment process with a single sentence, it challenges Meituan’s user pathway of “open app-search-order.”

As the first quarter of 2026 nears its end, China’s tech giants’ AI arms race has entered a heated phase. However, a clear divide is emerging: Alibaba and Tencent are building full-stack moats around large models, cloud computing, chips, and super portals, while Meituan’s AI deployment remains overly focused on vertical business scenarios, making its pace sluggish in this “upgrading battle,” with a widening gap compared to the first two.

On March 2, Meituan’s Guangnian Outside team launched its first AI-native browser, Tabbit, with immersive translation and intelligent agent features, attempting to carve out a niche in the AI application arena. However, less than 24 hours after launch, independent developer “Mengxi Sleep” publicly accused it of plagiarism. The developer pointed out that the translation plugin in Tabbit was highly similar to their project, sharing comparison images, and even found the original project filename “read-frog” still in the source code. The developer said: “Such a big company like Meituan copying my code for their AI browser—it’s shameful.” The public accusation quickly ignited the tech community.

In response, the Tabbit team stated: “Although our forked code was created before the project adopted an open-source license, we fully respect and understand the original author’s ownership and license choices.” They announced they would remove the translation feature from the next version of Tabbit and have open-sourced the project for community review and use. They also promised to communicate with the original author to obtain formal license authorization before updating the code and restoring features.

(Source: Internet)