Listed in Hong Kong since 2018, Meituan is mainly a consumer delivery and local-services business that also builds its own AI models for internal use and for developers. Worth watching if you compare Chinese model makers such as Tencent, ByteDance or Xiaomi, since LongCat ships through a public API and, in earlier versions, open weights.
With about 111,000 full-time employees, Meituan is a Beijing-headquartered technology company that runs a local-services platform covering food delivery, in-store dining, hotels and travel. It also trains the LongCat family of natively multimodal large language models, with its newest version released through an API platform in November 2026.
Founded: 2010 · HQ: Beijing, China · Team: 110000-112000 · CEO: Wang Xing · Funding: Public company (HKEX: 3690); Class B shares listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 20, 2018
About Meituan
Meituan was established in March 2010, when Wang Xing founded meituan.com in Beijing. Wang had already co-founded xiaonei.com, a college social network sold in October 2006 to the company later renamed Renren, and the microblogging site fanfou.com, which he started in May 2007 with Mu Rongjun, now Meituan's co-founder and a senior vice president. Meituan is incorporated in the Cayman Islands (September 25, 2015), runs its head office from Wang Jing East Road in Beijing, and floated its Class B shares in Hong Kong on September 20, 2018 (stock code 3690, with an RMB counter at 83690). Its stated mission is "We help people eat better, live better."
Meituan reports two segments. Core Local Commerce covers delivery services plus the in-store, hotel and travel businesses, and brought in RMB71.5 billion of the company's RMB104.6 billion revenue in the second quarter of 2026. New Initiatives, which holds grocery retail and the overseas delivery brand Keeta, grew revenue 25.0% to RMB33.1 billion in that quarter while narrowing its operating loss to RMB1.7 billion. Keeta reported stable profitability in Hong Kong, expanded into Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil in the second half of 2025 after growing in Saudi Arabia, and is concentrating on the Sao Paulo market in Brazil. Its grocery chain, Xiaoxiang Supermarket, opened a third offline store in Hangzhou in July 2026.
The numbers show a company in a heavy-investment phase. Revenue for 2025 reached RMB364.9 billion against RMB337.6 billion in 2024, but the year ended with a RMB23.4 billion loss after a RMB35.8 billion profit in 2024. Core Local Commerce swung to an operating loss of RMB6.9 billion amid intense industry competition, and New Initiatives lost RMB10.1 billion as overseas spending rose. For the first half of 2026 revenue was RMB195.7 billion, up 10.1%, with a RMB4.7 billion loss for the six months; the second quarter alone returned to a RMB2.2 billion profit on revenue up 14.4%.
Wang Xing, 47 at the date of the 2025 annual report, is chairman, chief executive officer and executive director. He also sits on the board of Li Auto and was named an independent director of Taikang Insurance Group on March 31, 2025. The company does not separate the chairman and CEO roles; its board says combining them keeps leadership consistent and speeds decisions, and it will keep reviewing the split. Mu Rongjun is the other executive director, and four independent non-executive directors complete the board: Yiu Kin Wah Stephen, Leng Xuesong, Shum Heung Yeung Harry and Yang Marjorie Mun Tak. Wang and Mu are the weighted voting rights beneficiaries. At December 31, 2025 Meituan employed about 111,298 people full time, nearly all in China and mainly in Beijing and Shanghai, with the rest in Chengdu, Shijiazhuang, Wuhan, Shenzhen and other cities.
Meituan says it began building its own large language model, LongCat, in early 2023. According to its 2025 ESG report it has since open-sourced LongCat-Flash-Chat, LongCat-Flash-Thinking, LongCat-Flash-Omni, LongCat-Image and LongCat-Video. On its API platform it retired six older models on May 29, 2026 to concentrate capacity on LongCat-2.0, released on June 30, 2026, and followed with LongCat-2.5 on November 2, 2026, a natively multimodal model that the launch post puts at 1.6 trillion parameters with about 48 billion active per token. The annual report calls LongCat the primary foundation for internal AI applications such as a programming assistant and pilot customer-service agents, and says the Xiaomei life assistant and Xiaotuan inside the Meituan App combine LongCat with open-source models. Merchants get CatPaw agents for restaurants, services retail, health and travel, and the public gets the LongCat App. The annual report says LongCat reached a top-tier domestic level in public authoritative evaluations without naming the leaderboards, so read that as a company claim.
Beyond its own models, Meituan held 12.66% of Li Auto, 3.86% of Z.AI and 7.61% of Unitree at June 30, 2026. Chinese groups that pair a large consumer platform with in-house models include Tencent (Hunyuan, Yuanbao), ByteDance (Seed, Doubao) and Xiaomi (MiMo). Of these, Xiaomi ships MiMo weights under the MIT license, while LongCat-2.5 weights are listed as coming soon. The Tencent profile covers the messaging-platform case, and the ByteDance profile the short-video one. Meituan's edge is the data behind Xiaotuan: merchant listings, consumption behavior and user reviews, which its chairman's statement names as inputs. Its gap is that most figures above come from the company itself, and the interim report ties higher corporate-level costs to AI investment. More companies of this type are in the bigtech directory.
Mission
We help people eat better, live better.
Products
- Meituan App (Consumer local-services super app): https://www.meituan.com
- LongCat models (Large language and multimodal models): https://longcat.chat
- LongCat API Platform (Developer API (OpenAI and Anthropic formats)): https://longcat.chat/platform/docs/
- Keeta (Overseas food delivery)
- Xiaotuan AI assistant (In-app AI assistant)
Meituan Models on Hokai
Compliance
ISO 27001, ISO 27018, National Information System Security Level Protection Level 3
Links
Frequently Asked Questions
Who owns Meituan and how is it funded?
Meituan is a public company, not a venture-backed one: its Class B shares trade in Hong Kong under code 3690, and founders Wang Xing and Mu Rongjun hold the weighted voting rights. It ended 2025 with RMB106.8 billion in cash and RMB60.1 billion in short-term treasury investments, which cushioned a RMB23.4 billion full-year loss. There is no private funding round to track.
What AI products does Meituan offer in 2026?
Developers get the LongCat models through the LongCat API Platform in OpenAI and Anthropic formats. Consumers get the LongCat App, the standalone Xiaomei assistant and Xiaotuan inside the Meituan App, while merchants get CatPaw agents. LongCat-2.5 pay-as-you-go pricing was listed on November 3, 2026 as a limited-time $0.30 per million uncached input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens.
What security certifications does Meituan hold?
The 2025 annual report states that Meituan's user-data handling holds ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certification plus China's national Level 3 information-system security protection certification, with encryption in transit and in storage. It does not mention a SOC 2 report, and no data-residency regions are listed. The LongCat API pages checked on November 3, 2026 set out no data-retention or customer-data training terms, so ask before sending regulated data.
Which companies compete with Meituan in AI models?
On Hokai the nearest peers are Tencent with Hunyuan and Yuanbao, ByteDance with Seed and Doubao, and Xiaomi with MiMo. Meituan trails Xiaomi if you need downloadable weights today, since LongCat-2.5 weights are marked coming soon, but it offers a hosted model with a 1M-token context and merchant-data tie-ins the others do not list.
How do you start using Meituan's AI models?
Register at longcat.chat/platform (mobile number in mainland China, email or mobile elsewhere), create an API key, then point an OpenAI or Anthropic SDK at api.longcat.chat with the model name LongCat-2.5. Mainland China users must complete identity verification before recharging, while the international FAQ says verification is not required to recharge. Consumers can instead use the LongCat App or the Xiaotuan assistant in the Meituan App.
Top Alternatives
- Tencent: Pick Tencent if you want a model family spanning Hunyuan text, 3D and video plus WeChat distribution; pick Meituan if the use case is local services, merchants and delivery.
- ByteDance: Pick ByteDance if you build around Seed models and the Doubao assistant; pick Meituan for an API with OpenAI and Anthropic compatible endpoints.
- Xiaomi: Pick Xiaomi if you need MIT-licensed MiMo weights you can download today; pick Meituan for a hosted 1M-context agentic model.