Meituan

Meituan’s $2.3B adjusted Q3 loss in 2025 marked a sharp reversal as its food-delivery subsidy war with Alibaba and JD.com intensified.

Who they are

Meituan is a Chinese food-delivery and local-commerce platform whose coverage also encompasses hotels and earlier expansion into businesses including ride-hailing. It appears both as a major operating rival to Alibaba and JD.com and as an investor alongside Tencent and other Chinese technology groups, including in generative-AI companies.

The recent arc

The recent coverage shifted from strong operating growth to the cost of defending market position. Reuters reported that Q3 2024 revenue rose 22.4% year over year to $12.9B, with net profit tripling to $1.78B and core delivery revenue up 20.2%; by late 2025, Bloomberg reported Q3 revenue growth of just 2% to $13.4B and a $2.3B adjusted net loss, Meituan’s first loss since 2022. The turning point in the stories is the subsidy and price war with JD.com and Alibaba, rather than a simple demand slowdown.

Coverage was particularly active across 2025’s middle quarters and again in early 2026 as competition became a policy issue. The Financial Times described the subsidy war, a large Q3 loss and internal debate over global expansion; Reuters then reported that China had opened a probe into online food-delivery competition intended to curb price wars. The latest New York Times coverage places Meituan’s pursuit of non-US growth alongside broader geopolitical adaptation by Chinese technology companies.

The tension

The central tension is whether Meituan can preserve its food-delivery leadership while Alibaba and JD.com use aggressive pricing and subsidies to contest the market. That fight is squeezing profitability and has drawn regulatory attention, while Meituan’s investments in companies such as Even Realities and Beijing Zhipu Huazhang, plus its LongCat-2.0 model launch, show it is also participating in China’s broader AI and hardware ecosystem.

Why it matters

If the price war persists, Meituan’s trajectory will be a test of how much profit Chinese local-commerce platforms must sacrifice to retain users and merchants under closer regulatory scrutiny. A curb on coercive competition could change the economics for Meituan, Alibaba and JD.com, but the coverage leaves unresolved whether regulation, overseas growth, or Meituan’s adjacent technology efforts will materially offset the pressure on its core delivery business.

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