After AI annual revenue surpasses 100 million, what’s Weimob’s next plan?
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In the era where AI large models are reshaping thousands of industries, enterprise-level SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors' AI strategies are becoming more concrete.
On April 22, Fengchun You, Executive Director and President of Weimob Group, systematically released the “AI First” strategic panoramic framework for the first time. Compared to the previous tool-based positioning focused on “cost reduction and efficiency improvement,” Weimob clearly stated that AI is a growth engine that reconstructs the underlying logic of business.
More convincing than strategic slogans are the financial data: Weimob’s 2025 financial report shows its annual AI-related revenue reached 116 million yuan for the first time, and its growth in the second half of 2025 soared 137.5%. Against the backdrop of a slight year-on-year decrease in SaaS subscription revenue, AI is becoming this veteran retail SaaS company’s new growth variable.
However, as the market fervently discusses the narrative of “Can AI save SaaS”, Weimob’s challenges are just beginning: from rebuilding the technology architecture, to the almost zero-tolerance delivery standards of B-end clients, and the business model shift from selling tools to selling outcomes—this path is clear but every step is not easy.
01 AI First
At the summit, Fengchun You stated: AI will not replace SaaS; AI and SaaS are a combination.
Weimob has now fully integrated AI into its business foundation, including core directions such as AI+SaaS, AI+Marketing, AI+Global Expansion, and AI To C.
Positioning AI as “First” is not just a slogan, but is based on a sober recognition of the SaaS industry’s predicament.
In 2025, Weimob’s subscription solution (SaaS) revenue was 897 million yuan, a slight decrease of 2.3% year-on-year, with the number of paying merchants declining 7.2% year-on-year. Although the company explains this as a strategic shift to actively cut low-quality businesses, a deeper signal cannot be ignored: the traditional pay-per-seat SaaS model is facing systemic challenges.
However, this does not mean SaaS vendors have no opportunities.
Huatai Securities has previously pointed out that the rapid development of AI Agents will accelerate the restructuring of the software industry. In the AI era, winners will include deeply vertical SaaS companies with extremely granular, vertical industry data that AI cannot publicly crawl from the internet; or infrastructure platforms that possess core customer relationship data—these may become the heavy base required for Agents to access; and security audit companies, specializing in verifying whether AI execution results are compliant and safe.
InAI+SaaS, Weimob upgraded the “Agent+Skills” technology architecture, launching the“Agent based on Skill dispatch” architecture, encapsulating the complex functions of SaaS systems as standardized Skills, which can be autonomously parsed and invoked by AI Agents.At the same time, the company has launched Weimob Admin Skills, aiming to cover high-frequency scenarios such as promotions and intelligent operations.
Meanwhile, in the AI+Marketing sector, another important signal released by Weimob is the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) solution “Xingqi”.
As AI search is gradually replacing traditional search engines as the main portal for information retrieval, Gartner predicts that by 2026, visits to traditional search engines will drop by 25%, with nearly a quarter of traffic shifting to new carriers such as AI chatbots. iiMedia Research data shows that the size of China’s GEO market is expected to reach 94.2 billion yuan in 2026, a year-on-year growth of 169.7%.
For Weimob, GEO’s significance not only lies in opening up new traffic portals for merchants, but more importantly in unlocking gross margin space in marketing business. Behind this is a performance reference as the merchant solutions gross margin jumps from 63.1% to 90.9%.
However, Weimob has taken some detours in its AI First strategy.
Xiaofeng Xiao, Weimob Group Vice President of Technology, admitted in an interview, “We used to want to fill the page for users as completely as possible, maybe with 100 or 150 parameters, requiring AI to understand and fill each one.”
Xiaofeng Xiao added, another issue is AI fallback responses. “To avoid awkward responses, AI would give fallback answers. Previously, due to lack of experience, we also provided fallback answers to merchants; when merchants felt they were incorrect, it bred suspicion. For entertainment scenarios, fallback is good; without fallback it's worse, but for B-end it doesn't work.”
02 Challenges Persist
Xiaofeng Xiao told Wallstreet News that in deploying AI in retail scenarios, the biggest difficulty is non-technical: “Merchants believe AI is omnipotent and should not make mistakes; even a minor error makes it unusable.”
At the same time, the tools themselves face learning cost issues. The boss wants to promote AI while frontline employees resist—operations staff worry: “If AI is fully automated, what will I do?”
Weimob’s approach is to promote penetration through case sharing, onsite training, and “teaching by example” from industry benchmarks. Its peer Youzan has also set the goal in 2026 to increase AI product penetration and “realize the value of AI.”
In the interview, Xiaofeng Xiao proposed that charging by Token is only the initial stage of AI commercialization—one million Tokens cost only 0.20 yuan, with service providers earning the price spread. “In future, it should be based on how much GMV growth the shopping guide Agent brings, and fees should be proportional. Only then does AI’s true value manifest.” Everbright Securities also pointed out in its research report that the launch of new products opens up the imagination for Weimob to transition from subscription fee to performance fee.
However, the new model still requires market validation.
The first obstacle Weimob encountered in its promotion process is customers’ insufficient understanding of Token consumption,Xiaofeng Xiao gave an example,“Manycustomersthink AI capability is just part of SaaS—why pay extra?” This cognitive gap will not automatically be bridged by grand strategies.
The growth in AI revenue is certainly eye-catching, but its absolute volume of 116 million yuan still accounts for less than 8% of the total revenue of 1.592 billion yuan.
Weimob’s choice of AI First strategic direction may be rational, but it does not guarantee who will reach the finish line first. Whether Weimob can completely achieve a value leap from tool provider to growth engine in the coming wave of intelligence—this big test has just begun.
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