NextFin News — E-commerce giant Meituan launched CatPaw on Monday, a full-scenario artificial intelligence agent platform designed to streamline enterprise workflow automation and merchant management.
The Beijing-based local services provider developed the platform to deliver an out-of-the-box AI workspace alongside enterprise-grade development and hosting tools for merchants. CatPaw enables businesses to build collaborative, manageable software assistants to automate routine commercial operations across diverse service sectors. Internal deployment data reveals the system already serves over 90,000 Meituan employees and powers more than 30,000 active agents, with field validation completed across dining, beauty, and pet healthcare merchant ecosystems.
Commercial adoption of specialized AI middleware is gaining momentum across the Chinese mainland's local services economy as platforms seek to lower digitisation costs for small and medium-sized enterprises. Platform operators are increasingly deploying specialized operational software to deepen merchant engagement and boost operational throughput across competitive micro-merchant categories. By embedding tailored automation tools directly into merchant backends, major technology firms are expanding monetization opportunities beyond core transaction commission fees while strengthening vendor retention in high-frequency service markets.
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