An AI-themed bar in Beijing's Zhongguancun tech hub hands out free, unlimited DeepSeek tokens with its drinks, running inference locally on two Nvidia DGX Spark mini-PCs kept on display. The AGI Bar, opened last year on Haidian district's Inno Way startup street by Song De, an independent AI developer in his thirties who runs it in his spare time, sells a signature 9.9 yuan ($1.50) glass of foam, also named AGI, and lets anyone on the WiFi code use its house AI agent at no charge. Song has told Reuters the bar is "completely losing money," with roughly 10 times more drinks given away than sold.
The venue sits a short walk from Tsinghua and Peking universities and the Beijing offices of DeepSeek and Microsoft, has hosted parties for Chinese AI labs including Z.ai, and keeps the gong Z.ai struck for its January Hong Kong listing outside the front door. Its registered Chinese name translates to "knowledge distillation," a pun that works equally well for liquor and LLMs.
