--- description: Find out why Ant Group was selected for TIME‘s list of the most influential companies of 2026. title: TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2026: Ant Group image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8c20ebd7eee4b758/69d7db50f9a0bf71aefde07b/time100-companies-2026-ant-group.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Apr 30, 2026 # Ant Group China’s fintech giant by [Charlie Campbell](/author/charlie-campbell/) ## Charlie Campbell Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large  The Alipay reception of the Shanghai office building of Ant Group in Shanghai. The Alipay reception of the Shanghai office building of Ant Group in Shanghai.Hector Retamal—AFP/Getty Images After a sweeping regulatory overhaul, Chinese finance conglomerate Ant Group has spent the past year expanding internationally. Ant International, the group's global unit, built Alipay+ into a vast cross-border digital wallet network spanning more than 100 markets across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, and generated an estimated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2025, up roughly 25% year over year. But the bigger shift has been Ant's strategic repositioning as an AI-first company, with R&D spending hitting a record $3.26 billion in 2024\. Ant has rolled out an AI-powered “virtual CFO,” [Antom Copilot](https://www.antom.com/news/detail/ant-international-upgrades-antom-copilot-to-advance-domain-specific-agentic-ai-to-solve-global-payment-complexity/ "undefined"), to help small and medium businesses with payment integration, onboarding, risk management, and chargeback resolution. Last year, Ant also debuted [AQ](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/26/chinas-ant-launches-ai-powered-health-care-app-eyes-global-expansion.html "undefined"), an AI healthcare app that lets users ask medical questions of more than 5,000 hospitals and nearly 1 million doctors, and which surpassed 100 million users in its first 10 months. "We are passionate about using frontier technology to support \[small and medium businesses\] and the use of AI will really uplift inclusion," Ant Group Chairman [Eric Jing said](https://www.ant-intl.com/en/news/detail/?id=ant-group-chairman-eric-jing-outlines-strategy-for-inclusive-ai-collaboration-on-tokenised-settlement&tag=AI "undefined") at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/ant-group/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/ant-group/"},"headline":"Ant Group","datePublished":"2026-04-30T13:37:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-15T14:13:11.775Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/ant-group/","keywords":["TIME100 Companies","franchise","list"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8c20ebd7eee4b758/69d7db50f9a0bf71aefde07b/time100-companies-2026-ant-group.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlie Campbell","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/charlie-campbell/"}],"creator":"Charlie Campbell","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8c20ebd7eee4b758/69d7db50f9a0bf71aefde07b/time100-companies-2026-ant-group.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/ant-group/","name":"Ant Group"}}]}] ```