To C, To B, and the Next Big Thing Called To A
After To C and To B, the Next Wave is To A: Serving AI Agents
In a recent quarterly earnings call, Meituan's Wang Xing introduced a new concept: To A (To Agent), signifying that future business services will increasingly target AI Agents as primary clients, not just consumers or merchants. This shift implies that internet giants must now consider how to make their services more appealing for AI Agents to recommend, fundamentally altering traditional distribution logic.
This "To A era" is prompting an unusual trend of alliances among major tech companies. Unlike previous competitive battles, firms like Meituan, Tencent, JD.com, Huawei, OPPO, and OpenAI are rapidly forming partnerships. The reason is strategic: as AI Agents become the primary user interface, handling tasks from a single command (e.g., "Book a Japanese restaurant for tomorrow"), the risk for platforms is being bypassed entirely. Companies are positioning themselves within this new value chain.
Three primary strategies are emerging:
1. **Super-Entry Points + Service Providers:** Platforms like Tencent's Yuanbao, WeChat, and ChatGPT aim to be the first-stop Agent, integrating various services (food delivery, shopping, travel) from partners like Meituan and JD.com.
2. **Apps as Callable Services:** Companies like Meituan, JD.com, and Uber are ensuring their core services remain accessible and callable by external Agents, shifting from front-end apps to back-end capabilities.
3. **System-Level Agent Entry Points:** Smartphone makers (Huawei, Honor, OPPO) are leveraging their OS-level AI assistants to control the initial user command, redistributing it to relevant service apps.
While alliances offer mutual benefit—entry points gain service capabilities, and service providers gain traffic—inherent conflicts of interest exist. A dominant Agent platform could eventually attempt to connect directly with suppliers (restaurants, hotels), bypassing current aggregators like Meituan or Ctrip. Other unresolved challenges include the potential for Agent recommendations to become a new form of paid ranking and unclear accountability for faulty recommendations.
The current rush to form alliances is a defensive move by service providers to secure their position before the landscape solidifies. In this To A-driven restructuring, the greatest risk is not losing the race but failing to hear the starting gun.
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