In Zhongguancun Innovation Street in Beijing, an AI-themed bar called AGI Bar is becoming a gathering place for local AI developers, investors, and students. Founder Song De summarizes the commonalities between AI and alcohol as "hallucinations, bubbles, and distillation." The bar is named after the concept of "Artificial General Intelligence" and is located near Tsinghua University, Peking University, and tech companies like DeepSeek and Microsoft. It has become an offline salon for researchers from different labs and universities to exchange industry trends.
The bar's signature drink, "AGI," is sold for only 9.9 yuan. After connecting to the AI agent via WiFi, customers can receive unlimited DeepSeek Tokens for free—computing power is provided by two Nvidia DGX Spark computers in the store. The bar's Chinese name is "Knowledge Distillation," referring both to the process of alcohol distillation and AI model distillation technology, implying that communication between people is also a form of knowledge transfer.
Although human staff are still employed, Song De has automated inventory management, reservations, and membership systems using AI agents. Due to high demand, he plans to expand the store in Beijing this year and introduce humanoid robots for drink delivery; a branch was already opened in Shanghai this June. However, like many open-source models in China, this bar has yet to turn a profit.
Song De admitted, "This bar is completely losing money; the amount of drinks given away is at least ten times the amount sold."