- Alibaba affiliate becomes largest external shareholder in weight-management platform
- The deal signals a shift in AI healthcare from answering questions to providing personalized health guidance
Ant Group has invested in Boohee, a Chinese health consumption platform focused on weight management and nutrition, becoming the company’s largest external shareholder with a stake of more than 28%.
The two companies announced the strategic investment partnership on July 8, though they did not disclose the transaction value.
Boohee founder and CEO Ma Haihua will remain the company’s largest shareholder.
The partnership will focus on building professional AI-powered health services around areas such as weight management.
The first joint feature, an AI tool that estimates calorie intake by analyzing food images, has already launched on Ant’s AI health assistant app Afu.
Building an AI health ecosystem
Founded in 2007 as Boohee.com, Boohee has spent nearly two decades developing digital tools for nutrition management, weight control and chronic disease prevention.
The company said it has served 200 million registered users and 30 million annual active users. Its food database contains more than 1.6 million nutrition entries, and it helped users collectively lose about 17.5 million kilograms in 2025.
The investment strengthens the connection between Ant’s massive AI health platform and Boohee’s specialized health data assets.
Afu has become one of China’s largest AI health applications, with more than 100 million users and over 10 million health-related consultations processed daily.
About 55% of its users come from China’s lower-tier cities, according to the company.
Ant Group has identified healthcare as one of its three strategic pillars alongside digital payments and digital finance.
The company recently launched a nationwide “100 million jin scientific weight-loss campaign” (roughly 50 million kilograms), using AI-powered tools such as smart body-fat scales and AI personal coaches to support weight management.
From medical services to daily health management
The investment marks a broader expansion of Ant’s healthcare strategy — moving beyond access to medical services and into everyday health management.
By combining Afu’s large-scale AI user ecosystem with Boohee’s nutrition database and industry expertise, the companies aim to upgrade AI health services from simply “answering questions” to actively helping users change behaviors.
The partnership will also explore areas including scientific weight management, food e-commerce and joint AI model training.
Why this matters for global audiences
The Ant-Boohee partnership highlights a broader trend in the global AI healthcare race: the move from general-purpose AI assistants toward specialized health management systems.
While early AI health applications focused largely on providing information and answering user queries, the next stage is expected to require deeper domain expertise, high-quality datasets and the ability to guide long-term behavioral changes.
For global audiences, China’s approach offers a different model for scaling healthcare AI: rather than replacing doctors, AI platforms are being used to distribute professional health knowledge to a much wider population.
Ant Afu’s reach among users in smaller cities, combined with Boohee’s nearly two decades of nutrition data accumulation, reflects an attempt to combine professional-grade health management with mass-market accessibility.
Whether this model combining professional expertise and AI platform can deliver reliable and scalable health support while maintaining medical credibility will be closely watched by the global digital health industry.
