QuestMobile Report: AI Investment and Financing to Grow by 20.8% Year-on-Year in the Second Half of 2025, Plugins Account for 81.5% of 205 New AI Applications

PANews, December 23 – According to QuestMobile's "AI Application Interaction Innovation and Ecosystem Implementation Report for the Second Half of 2025," the AI application sector is showing a trend of breakthroughs in multimodal technology and accelerated ecosystem development in the second half of the year. The report points out that the top three AI-native apps by active users are Doubao (155 millions), DeepSeek (81.56 millions), and Yuanbao (20.84 millions). Newcomers such as Ant Group's Afu and Lingguang have performed impressively, ranking fourth and tenth respectively on the weekly active user list.

The capital market is also active. Between July and November, the AI industry completed 186 investment and financing events, with a total amount reaching 33.67 billions RMB, a year-on-year increase of 20.8%. Multimodal interaction has become the industry mainstream, accounting for 73.3%, while full-modal large models, though only accounting for 1.9%, are seen as a key direction for the future.

At the application level, among 205 new AI applications, plugins account for 81.5%, with strong demand in vertical tracks such as AI image processing and AI professional consulting. Leading enterprises are actively promoting ecosystem development. For example, Tencent has achieved full-scenario matrix coverage through "Yuanbao," and Ant Group's Lingguang App has seen a sevenfold increase in daily active users, showing strong performance.

In addition, smartphone manufacturers are driving the shift in interaction from "App-dominated" to "intelligent agent-dominated" through GUI agent technology featuring "screen viewing + screen tapping," further enhancing user experience and task completion efficiency. The report believes that multimodality and ecosystemization will become the core driving forces for future growth in AI applications.