Luckin Coffee: voice ordering and in-chat payment with Lucky AI

In May 2025 Luckin Coffee and ByteDance’s Volcano Engine launched Lucky AI, the chain’s first AI agent, built around voice ordering and recommendations based on past orders. In September 2025 Luckin became the first partner for Alipay’s “AI Pay”, letting customers order and pay without leaving the conversation. Luckin’s Q1 2025 total net revenue was RMB 8.865 billion, up 41.2%, but that growth predates Lucky AI.

At a glance

Item	Detail
Company	Luckin Coffee
Industry	Retail
Use cases	Business intelligence, customer experience, data-driven decisions, customer interaction, order processing
Functions involved	Business intelligence, process optimization, customer experience
Reported results	Q1 2025 total net revenue RMB 8.8654B (+41.2% YoY); 74.3M average monthly transacting customers (+24.0% YoY). The results do not break out any Lucky AI contribution
Moments rating	S (quick win)
AI scenario score	100

Case details

Background

Most Luckin orders come through its own app and WeChat mini program. Its Q1 2025 results, published on April 29, 2025, reported 24,097 stores as of March 31 (15,598 self-operated, 8,499 partnership) and 74.3 million average monthly transacting customers, up 24.0%. At that volume of online ordering, Luckin began replacing some screen taps with a conversational agent.

What they did

• Launched Lucky AI. On May 26, 2025, Luckin announced Lucky AI (v1.0) with Volcano Engine, running on both ByteDance’s Doubao model and DeepSeek. The persona is based on the brand’s white deer mascot, Lucky.
• Started with voice ordering. Available in the Luckin app and WeChat mini program, it takes spoken orders, makes suggestions, reorders a past drink with one phrase, and recommends new items from order history for undecided customers.
• Connected payment. At the Bund Summit on September 11, 2025, Alipay launched “AI Pay” with Luckin as the first partner. A customer calls up Lucky AI in the Luckin Alipay mini program or app, orders by voice, says “place order”, verifies identity and pays, all inside the conversation. Before this, agent orders still jumped to a payment page for manual confirmation.

Results and data

Q1 2025 total net revenue was RMB 8.8654 billion, up 41.2%. That report came out before Lucky AI launched and does not mention AI, so the growth cannot be attributed to it. None of the sources reviewed disclose Lucky AI’s user numbers, order share or conversion rate. Earlier claims of “71.8 million monthly active users”, “China’s first conversational AI payment” and “ordering cut from 5–7 steps to 1–2” could not be found in the sources. Xinhua describes it instead as the first time Alipay connected in-agent ordering and payment end to end.

What to take from it

• Start with repeat orders. For frequent, standardized purchases, “the usual, please” is the request best suited to conversation, and the value is immediate.
• Payment closes the loop. An agent that only answers questions rarely drives transactions. Luckin used Alipay to make “say it, order it, pay” one step. Companies building their own AI agent should connect existing payment and membership systems early.
• Use more than one model. Running two large models reduces dependence on any single provider.

Limits

• Public material describes features only, with no performance data; set your own metrics and run controlled tests.
• Voice ordering works best with few SKUs and clear customization options. Complex menus with many combinations carry higher error risk.
• Relying on a third-party super app for payment and entry points means accepting its rules and integration timeline.

Sources

Original source: Luckin Coffee case material (53AI) Additional source: Luckin Coffee · Q1 2025 financial results Additional source: DAO Insights · Lucky AI launch Additional source: Xinhua · Alipay launches AI Pay, debuting with Luckin’s Lucky AI

This entry is industry research: a publicly documented, third-party AI case. It is not a Moments client case. For work Moments delivered itself, see client cases.