The collaborative office sector is experiencing a new wave of transformation as AI competition intensifies across the industry.

Against the backdrop of AI large language models penetrating various sectors, the three major platforms - DingTalk, Feishu, and WeCom - have gradually moved away from user-scale-focused traffic wars toward AI-capability-driven intelligent competition.

This transition became particularly evident through recent intensive product launches. In July, ByteDance's Feishu took the lead by hosting a product launch event, introducing and upgrading a series of AI collaboration features. Subsequently, Tencent's WeCom and Alibaba's DingTalk also announced their latest AI developments, creating a competitive landscape where all three companies are racing toward intelligent transformation.

**Different AI Integration Approaches Based on Tech Giants' Ecosystems**

The AI arms race among the three collaborative office giants has now expanded from feature development to marketing campaigns. On their official iOS download pages, WeCom, DingTalk, and Feishu all prominently feature AI capabilities as core selling points.

While all three platforms focus on AI upgrades, their distinct ecosystem backgrounds have led to significantly different implementation strategies.

At its July 9 AI product launch, Feishu introduced an "AI Product Maturity Model" (M1-M4) to define the usability of its AI functions across different stages. The newly released knowledge Q&A and AI meeting products have reached M3 maturity or higher, enabling stable operation in most common scenarios while maintaining low error rates.

Additionally, Feishu made multiple updates to its flagship "multi-dimensional spreadsheet" product. Loading times have been reduced from 7.4 seconds to 0.94 seconds, while AI agents have been integrated to handle workflows, efficiently completing complex tasks that previously required extensive manual operations.

WeCom leverages Tencent's connectivity advantages by centering its AI upgrades around the "WeChat ecosystem." Its version 5.0 introduced three major functions: intelligent search, intelligent summary, and intelligent robots, addressing pain points such as scattered information, time-consuming reporting, information distortion, and difficult business consultations.

Notably, the intelligent spreadsheet can link with WeChat to automatically create customer profiles, extract information, and provide follow-up summaries, helping enterprises connect internal and external collaboration.

Bobby, head of WeCom AI and international products, emphasized the importance of integrated office experience in WeCom's AI strategy. He explained that the updates aim to consolidate operations that previously required switching between multiple applications onto a single platform, using AI capabilities to unify massive data and information integration. The interconnection between WeCom and WeChat creates integrated collaboration between internal cooperation and external market capture.

DingTalk demonstrates Alibaba's ecosystem reconstruction determination. On August 25, DingTalk released version 8.0. CEO Wuzhao, who left DingTalk five years ago, returned and proposed the concept of "clearing the past" and "DingTalk 8.0 is also AI DingTalk 1.0."

DingTalk launched over 10 AI products including DingTalk One, enterprise AI search engine "AI Search & Ask," AI spreadsheets, AI audio recording, and smart hardware DingTalk A1, building an AI-native product ecosystem. DingTalk One reorganizes work information flow through Agent-driven methods, changing the traditional "people looking for tasks" office model by having AI organize information by priority and present it clearly to users through information flow cards.

Worth noting is DingTalk 8.0's new-generation voice tool "AI Audio Recording," which achieves real-time voice transcription, semantic analysis, and intelligent summarization based on large language models, complemented by the first smart hardware DingTalk A1 for software-hardware collaborative office integration.

**Three-Way Battle in Collaborative Office: Who Will Successfully Break Through?**

Under the AI wave, DingTalk, Feishu, and WeCom leverage the ecosystem advantages of Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent respectively to create differentiated product paths, but are increasingly showing obvious feature homogenization trends, with competition upgrading from "what you have, I don't" to "what you have, I do better."

All three leading platforms in the collaborative office sector have strengthened their intelligent application layouts this year. Functions like DingTalk's "DingTalk One," Feishu's "Knowledge Q&A," and WeCom's "Intelligent Robot" all center on natural language interaction to create human-machine collaborative interaction portals. Meanwhile, intelligent search and automatic summarization capabilities have become standard configurations in platform upgrades.

AI spreadsheets have also become a key competitive area for DingTalk, Feishu, and WeCom. Feishu launched "Multi-dimensional Spreadsheets," WeCom introduced "Intelligent Spreadsheets," and DingTalk released "AI Spreadsheets," all featuring automatic generation and data analysis AI functions. Currently, platform competition is no longer limited to spreadsheet tools themselves but has shifted toward exploring underlying AI Agent capabilities.

As collaborative office software increasingly incorporates AI capabilities, core product functions are becoming homogenized, and user experience differences across platforms are gradually becoming similar. In this context, providing deeply customized solutions for specific industries could become an effective path for building sustainable competitive barriers.

It's important to note that China's collaborative office market has entered a "red ocean" state, with user growth plateauing and incremental space continuously narrowing. Simultaneously, AI technology research and implementation require continuous substantial capital investment. Against this backdrop, all three giants - DingTalk, WeCom, and Feishu - face profitability challenges without exception.

Early last year, WeCom Vice President Li Zhifeng stated in internal partner communications that he was confident WeCom could achieve profitability before DingTalk and Feishu in 2024.

As of now, WeCom has connected over 14 million enterprises and organizations, with daily WeChat user reach through WeCom exceeding 750 million. However, neither the August 20 new product launch nor Tencent's latest semi-annual report disclosed specific operational progress or profitability status for WeCom.

DingTalk announced last year that its ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) for the first half of fiscal 2025 (April to September 2024) reached $200 million, stating plans to achieve break-even by 2025. However, Alibaba Group's recent financial reports have not mentioned DingTalk's specific profitability status.

Regarding Feishu, CEO Xie Xin revealed in September last year that 2023 ARR was $200 million, predicting it would exceed $300 million in 2024. While still in losses, the loss margin has significantly narrowed.

At this year's new product launch, Feishu only mentioned that its coverage rate among leading clients in automotive, cosmetics, tea beverages, and retail sectors has reached 80%, without further disclosing specific operational and profitability data.

Competition in the collaborative office sector has entered a new AI-driven stage. While DingTalk, Feishu, and WeCom create differentiated paths based on their respective ecosystems, they are becoming increasingly homogenized in feature evolution.

With intense competition and mounting profitability pressure, how to effectively convert technology investment into sustainable business models has become a key challenge all three platforms face. Future actual progress in "AI + office" applications by each party remains to be observed.