On November 18, photos surfaced online showing Jack Ma wearing an employee badge and a white cap while visiting Ant Group's campus, accompanied by Ant Group Chairman Eric Jing and CEO Han Xinyi. The images depict Ma in a low-key manner. Sources confirmed the authenticity of the photos to Sina Tech.

Earlier that day, Ant Group officially launched its multimodal general AI assistant "Lingguang," capable of generating mini-apps in 30 seconds via natural language input on mobile devices. The AI tool supports editing, interaction, and sharing. Notably, Lingguang is the industry's first AI assistant to generate multimodal content with full-code capability, supporting outputs like 3D models, audio-video, charts, animations, and maps.

The day prior, Alibaba announced its "Qianwen" project, marking its full-scale entry into the AI-to-consumer market. The public beta version of the Qianwen App was released, leveraging the open-source model Qwen3—ranked as the world's top-performing model—to compete directly with ChatGPT by offering free access and integration with various lifestyle scenarios.

Industry insiders speculate that Ma's visit to Ant Group may be linked to the recent rollout of these AI-related initiatives.