"Alipay has launched an invite-only beta of its Alipay AI platform, giving developers, merchants, and third-party software vendors the tools to wire their services directly into its conversational AI ecosystem. Ant Group spent years building out blockchain-based solutions. That chapter appears to be closing. Ant Group and Alipay are now shifting their platform expansion energy entirely into AI, not Web3. It’s a prioritization shift where the blockchain enthusiasm of the late 2010s has given way to an intense focus on large language models and AI infrastructure."