Will you buy the Token in the live broadcast room?

"Double Eleven" is approaching, and the live broadcast rooms of major e-commerce platforms are getting busy again.

Did you buy anything during this year’s “Double Eleven”?

As in previous years, some people buy furniture and some stock up on cosmetics. But this year, something different is that "3, 2, 1, get token" is written in the comment area of ​​some live broadcast rooms. Monthly membership cards for AI software have become a hot commodity in the live broadcast rooms.

About half an hour after the sale started, 100,000 monthly membership cards were sold in the live broadcast room, with a total of about 2 trillion Tokens.

What is Token? Why can it be sold as a commodity?

Token is the word element. In the live broadcast room, the person in charge of the AI software used a vivid metaphor: "Just like we need gas to drive and our daily appliances need electricity, the fuel for AI work is token."

Having said this, everyone must understand why Token can be sold for money, because without Token, our AI software will stop working.

In the past two years, AI has developed faster than many people imagined. This can be seen from the consumption of Tokens - data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology show that the average daily consumption of domestic tokens in June 2026 was about 500 trillion, which was nearly four times that in December 2025.

Therefore, it is only a matter of time before Token appears for sale in the live broadcast room. In fact, at the beginning of September, several AI companies had linked their packages to the recharge center of e-commerce platforms. There were daily packages for a few yuan, and annual packages for thousands of dollars.

Why are people willing to pay for Token?

A very important reason is that AI has become popular in China very quickly. From students to the elderly, "asking AI when in doubt" has become a new trend. For the majority of office workers, AI has become a good personal helper.

With the expansion of AI coverage, Token consumption is increasing. Many AI software have already experienced the situation of free large models that need to be queued. If there is no payment, the waiting time will become longer. And when AI can really solve practical problems for everyone, everyone will be happy to pay for Tokens.

Therefore, there are roughly two types of people who place orders for Tokens in the live broadcast room: one type is people who have already used related software and place orders in the live broadcast room for discounts and convenience; and the other type is people who have not used this software but want to give it a try, and the price is not expensive, so they might as well stock up first.

For manufacturers, they cannot actually make money just by relying on a single product in the link. However, manufacturers are willing to let tokens enter the live broadcast room in order to let everyone develop usage habits. This is the same logic as the taxi-hailing software that gave out red envelopes in the past.

Token's entry into the live broadcast room is actually a sign: large models no longer only live in press conferences, API documents and corporate purchase orders, but are put on shelves and sold directly to the public.

So, the question is for you viewers: Will you buy the Token in the live broadcast room?

"People's Daily Overseas Edition" (November 05, 2026, Page 09)

Liu Fawei