From Maps to Meals: Amap’s Street Stars Takes on Meituan
When Alibaba’s Amap, better known in English as AutoNavi, announced “Street Stars” this September, the move sounded innocuous: an AI-driven ranking of restaurants, hotels, and local attractions inside a navigation app. But beneath the user-facing gloss lay a much bigger ambition. For years, Amap has been the app Chinese users opened when they wanted to get somewhere. With Street Stars, Alibaba wants it to become the app they open when they want to decide what to do once they get there.
It is not just a new feature. It is a declaration that Amap is no longer content to be a tool. It wants to be a gateway into daily life. And that puts it squarely in the crosshairs of Meituan — the company that has spent the last decade building its empire on exactly that premise.
