On May 27, 2026, nearly a hundred local interior designers gathered at Chongqing Beicang Art Space. They participated in the designer open day event of Tmall Genie Whole House Intelligence “Genie Future Home·AI China Tour”.
On the surface, this is just an ordinary brand launch event, but in fact, Alibaba is playing a big game and changing the smart home battlefield from “selling equipment” to “selling space.”
Why is Alibaba focusing on designer channels?
First of all, the pain point of smart homes has never been technology.
Functions such as voice control, scene linkage, and remote control have long existed. What really makes users hesitate is whether this thing will look good in their own home, whether the designer knows how to match it, and who to contact for subsequent maintenance.
Designers are the key to solving these problems.
Secondly, the current decoration process is to first find a designer, who will come up with a plan, and then consider smart devices after the plan is finalized.
By the time the user thinks about installing a smart home, the water and electricity have been drained, the ceiling has been sealed, and they cannot install it even if they want to.
Alibaba wants to change this order and allow designers to incorporate smart homes into the design at the beginning of the project instead of making up for it afterwards.
Furthermore, users have a cognitive threshold for smart homes, but users trust designers.
If the designer says, “I designed this whole-house smart solution for you to match your style,” the conversion rate will be much higher.
The core of the “AI + Space” concept proposed by Alibaba is to make AI a part of the space, rather than a device in the space.
The traditional smart home is “device thinking”. For example, buy a smart speaker and put it on the table, install a smart light to adjust the brightness, and change a smart lock to unlock it with a fingerprint.
The AI + space is “scene thinking”. For example, when you walk into the living room, the lights will automatically adjust to a habitual mode; when you say “watch a movie”, the curtains, lights, and speakers will automatically link; when you leave home, the security will automatically arm and the air conditioner will automatically save energy.
The former is “I bought several smart devices”, and the latter is “My home is a smart space that understands me.”
This event revealed three industry signals.
First, smart homes have entered the “design-driven” era.
In the past, the focus of selling smart homes was function, price, and brand. In the future, the focus will be on whether they can integrate into users’ aesthetics and lifestyles. This requires smart home brands to open up designer channels and make products the default option for design solutions.
The second is that platform players have begun to integrate offline services.
Alibaba is not the first to make smart homes, but it is the first platform to attach so much importance to the designer ecosystem.
The ultimate goal of smart home is not to sell hardware, but to sell services, and services need people to deliver them. Designers are the key nodes of this service network.
Third, AI is reshaping the logic of space design.
Traditional design is “static” and designers make plans based on current needs; AI + space is “dynamic” and the space can continue to evolve as users use it.
This means that the way designers work must also change, from “designing a space” to “designing a space that will grow.”
This event of Tmall Elf is not large in scale, but the signal is very strong.
It marks that the smart home industry is shifting from “product competition” to “ecological competition” and from “functional competition” to “experience design.”
