Ant Group has published its 2025 sustainability report, setting out a record annual research and development spend of USD $5.17 billion.
The investment marked a fifth consecutive year of growth in research spending and was tied to work on foundational AI models, payment and daily service tools, and health services.
Operational carbon emissions fell 55.32% year on year, the report said, reflecting AI-led changes in computing systems and a broader shift in energy use across operations.
The group also achieved operational carbon neutrality for a fifth straight year. Clean energy accounted for 65% of power used in its data centres in 2025.
AI spending
Ant Group said its annual research and development spending has risen each year since 2021. The latest figure was RMB 35.03 billion, equivalent to USD $5.17 billion.
Part of that spending went into its Ling series of AI models. Ant Group released Ling-2.6-1T, a trillion-parameter language model aimed at coding and multi-step tasks.
Its embodied AI business, Robbyant, also released an open-source stack of AI models for physical-world applications. Among them was LingBot-World, which Ant Group described as a world model for video-based and interactive tasks.
Health push
Healthcare was one of the main areas highlighted in the report. Ant Group said its AI-native health app AQ had passed 100 million total users by February 2026.
By late 2025, the app had connected users to services from more than 5,000 medical institutions across China, and 301 partner facilities had integrated AI through the platform. Ant Group also said it worked with more than 2,000 doctors in China to launch AI Doctor Agents that handled daily health queries.
Those virtual doctor services were used by more than 6.9 million people in 2025, according to Ant Group. The company said the agents were trained on the clinical expertise of individual specialists.
Payments system
The report also outlined expansion in AI-based payments and consumer services through Alipay. Ant Group said Alipay had introduced an AI agent upgrade for users and launched a full-stack AI payment system that included AI Pay, AI Wallet, AI payment processing and Token Pay.
By May 2026, Alipay AI Pay had processed more than 300 million transactions, Ant Group said. The service had expanded across retail apps, smart glasses, consumer AI applications, smart vehicle cockpit systems, AI development platforms, AI model providers and one-person businesses.
Ant Group said the system was built on what it called China's first Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol, developed with partners. It added that the system included security tools for AI-led transactions.
Energy efficiency
On the infrastructure side, Ant Group said its self-developed Theta AI system was designed to deliver the same business result with lower computing use. The company said this lifted GPU utilisation during inference by 2.3 times.
It also said the system cut data centre carbon emissions by 139,545 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, forming part of the wider emissions reduction detailed in the report.
Ant Group Chairman Eric Jing and Chief Executive Officer Cyril Han set out the company's view on the social role of AI in a joint address. "Does technological advancement necessarily lead to shared prosperity? The answer lies not in the technology itself, but in the people who use it," they said.
"Making AI a driver for shared prosperity-this is our answer to the age of AI, and our shared commitment to the future," Jing and Han said.
The report also included comments from Sabrina Peng, Chief Sustainability Officer at Ant Group, on the company's approach to technology and access. "We believe that the true value of technology lies not in fleeting trends, but in genuine needs, steadfast commitment, and human well-being. How can technology reach everyone who truly needs it? With unwavering resilience, we will continue to use technology to bring small and beautiful changes to the world," Peng said.