Beijing Bar Serves Drinks With a Side of Free AI Tokens — 'AGI Bar' Lets Customers Tap Any Model

A bar in Beijing is betting that free access to artificial intelligence is the way to win customers. The AGI Bar, in the Zhongguancun tech hub known as China's Silicon Valley, offers free AI model tokens to anyone who orders a drink.

The venue was packed with laptop-using customers on a recent night, according to the South China Morning Post. One of the first things many did after ordering a drink was to connect to the in-house Wi-Fi and configure an AI agent to access the free tokens the bar provides.

Manager Yang Yuan said the bar, which opened in June last year, gives customers free tokens for any AI model as long as they order a drink and install a plug-in to access the bar's AI agent. It offers more than a dozen drinks, with a glass of its bestselling AGI beer priced at just 9.9 yuan (US$1.47).

The bar also runs DeepSeek-V4-Flash locally on two Nvidia DGX Spark computers, letting customers use the model free of charge. Yang declined to say how many tokens the bar consumes each month, noting that the costs are covered by the bar's owner.

Named after artificial general intelligence, the bar's walls are covered with logos and merchandise from major Chinese AI companies, including Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings.

The concept turns AI access into a bricks-and-mortar business: the drink is the entry ticket, and model credits are the core attraction. It is a small but concrete sign of how AI usage is moving from the cloud console into everyday venues — and how ordinary users are hunting for cheap, convenient model access.

The open question is whether the "drink for tokens" formula spreads to other cities, and how the bar balances free credits against running costs, since the model bills are paid out of the owner's pocket.