Tencent’s AI Strategy and WAIC Product Launches
Tencent operating like Meta? Internal competition continues; high-level strategy lags
The annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) is easily the most influential AI industry event in China. And obviously, Tencent was there. In addition to their booth and a few panel talks, I was invited to a few exclusive sessions and offline events this year. Although I couldn't join in person, I was able to get access online/ and through direct communications.
And luckily, I was able to join a closed-door WeChat/ Weixin event for a few analysts in Hong Kong at the Tencent office just two days after WAIC concluded, so I combined some takeaways from that as well into this post.
Tencent Leadership’s Open-Mindedness to Open-Source
I think the most interesting point was hearing firsthand from Tencent employees on the decision-making behind the company's integration of DeepSeek into its Yuanbao/WeChat and its own LLM Hunyun in parallel. It was confirmed that there were no financial relationships between DeepSeek and Tencent, rather a high-level mutual admiration-driven decision by Pony Ma himself and Liang Wenfeng. I think that shows 肚量 (stomach size) - open-mindedness + acceptance.
Tencent’s leaders have always been more low-profile compared to other prominent tech executives in China. Its PR function is mostly embedded into each business group/ unit and is self-driven rather than having a top-down strategy. This is due to a few reasons: 1) a less demanding KPI for high-profile PR; 2) the company functions in a way that product leaders call the shots and own their P&L. Showcasing again its less-centralized power set up.
For those who missed it, see here from February: Why Tencent's Integration of DeepSeek Into Its AI App Is a BIG DEAL.
Many Chinese LLM labs are choosing open source/ weight, and that is because it allows them to work on top of each other like an open-weight remix that can accelerate improvements. Essentially, using one model to distill another, and in some ways, it might mean there will be less likely to be a monopolistic breakout winner in the long run. Still, for the big techs that are more trying to stay relevant and capture value in the distribution channels of their existing apps, it makes more sense to be open source than not. Letting the real frontier model startups do their thing.
In that case, Tencent has been the most 心大 “open-minded” to embrace not only open-source but also this philosophy above… so today, with that…
LLM: Hunyuan
Leaning on its Hunyuan large model, Tencent has rolled out what they call a "AI Family Bucket" - like the KFC bucket you get it - product matrix, aiming to turn AI capabilities into accessible productivity tools. This strategy is anchored in Tencent's self-developed cloud technology and the Hunyuan large model.
Tencent said it is trying to cover a full-link technology architecture "from cloud to edge". Following Hunyuan Large and Hunyuan-A13B, Tencent's foundational models will further open-source more small and medium-sized models that also demonstrate excellent performance, which will likely further accelerate adoption by developers.
The Hunyuan-A13B is the industry's first 13B-level MoE (Mixed-of-Experts) open-source hybrid inference model, has a total of 80B parameters but activates only 13B, achieving performance comparable to leading open-source models with similar architectures, while being faster in inference and more cost-effective. It excels in Agent tool invocation and long-text capabilities.
The Hunyuan Turbo S is Tencent Hunyuan's new-generation flagship fast-thinking model, which has shown significant improvements in code and science capabilities, and complex instruction following, maintaining a leading position in global large model rankings. Its response speed has significantly improved, with first-token latency reduced by 44%.
The Hunyuan T1 is its deep-thinking model, further enhancing inference capabilities and excels in project-level code generation, high-difficulty mathematical reasoning, and text writing.
A breakthrough is its Multi-Modal AI Model Matrix.
This 3D model, version 1.0, is the industry's first open-source 3D world generation model that allows immersive roaming, interaction, and simulation. It combines panoramic visual generation with layered 3D reconstruction technology.
The Hunyuan 3D World Model (First Release & Open Source) is its debut 3D world model, focusing on 3D scene generation for game developers and 3D enthusiasts. Said to support text-to-3D and image-to-3D world generation.
The 360-degree scene is an exportable mesh, which means the results can be edited and used in mainstream game engines/modeling software. Its interactivity and editability allow developers to foreground objects, and separate background terrain, ground, and sky for secondary editing. Its roamability means that users can move around the scene, not just view it from a static point.
AI Infrastructure
Although not the biggest, Tencent Cloud usually ranks within the top three for cloud providers in China. Tencent Cloud's infrastructure spans 21 countries and regions globally, with 56 operational availability zones, over 1 million servers, and more than 3200 acceleration nodes. This forms a "technical backbone" supporting a wide range of AI applications. In May, we covered its CapEx projections to be RMB 27.5 billion (~USD 3.75 billion) for the first quarter, and compared to peers like ByteDance and Alibaba, it seemed quite tempered.
So far, we’ve seen the company play out its planned expansion in AI integration in 1) Agentic AI; 2) AI in WeChat; 3) AI boosting ad and gaming; and 4) Cloud, as it said it would during its 2025Q1 earnings.
The company has developed infrastructure, including high-performance HCC clusters, high-speed storage, and the Xingmai Network. HCC, designed for large model training, incorporates advanced technology and is used by 90% of the leading large model vendors in China.
AI Platforms
Similar to what Huawei has been doing with its “AI in a box” strategy. Tencent introduced five major AI productivity platforms to bridge the "last mile" of AI industrial applications.
The Tencent Cloud Intelligent Agent Platform (ToB-focused) was upgraded from the large model knowledge engine, which helps enterprises build stable, secure, and business-compliant intelligent agents by integrating their exclusive knowledge and scenarios. It includes industry best practices, leading RAG algorithms, and supports canvas-style workflow orchestration. It offers various development frameworks like LLM+RAG, Multi-agent, and Workflow, with a one-stop toolchain for application configuration, debugging, evaluation, and release. The new upgrade brings comprehensive Multi-Agent capabilities, leading RAG capabilities (connecting to mainstream databases and Tencent Docs), and intelligent Workflow capabilities with global-view Agents.
Tencent Yuanqi (元器) (ToC-focused): An all-in-one intelligent agent development platform that provides convenient intelligent agent building and distribution for C-end users, leveraging WeChat Official Accounts, Tencent Docs, and WeChat Pay MCP ecosystem advantages. Upgrades include stronger Official Account agents (Multi-agent mode, MCP integration, matrix account authorization), Tencent's unique ecosystem integration (Official Account articles as a knowledge base, Tencent Docs, WeChat Pay for monetization), and C-end traffic distribution via platforms like Tencent App Store.
Lexiang Knowledge Base (乐享知识库) is an enterprise-grade knowledge management tool from Tencent, offering capabilities such as knowledge accumulation, updates, collaborative management, permission settings, AI Q&A, and effect insights. It helps over 300,000 enterprises build knowledge-based organizations.
Entering into Robotics
A significant announcement at the event was the Tencent Embodied AI Open Platform (TAIROS).
This is a purely software platform for the robotics field that Robotics X Lab officially launched. Tencent's overall strategy in robotics is to be a "titanium screw" – a partner to all robot manufacturers, rather than replacing them in hardware.
TAIROS includes embodied AI large models, cloud services, and supports rapid model verification through simulation environments. It provides three core model capabilities:
Planning Large Model for complex task planning,
Multi-modal Perception Large Model for understanding the environment and body state,
Perception-Action Joint Large Model for connecting "seeing" to "doing" with safe and precise action commands.
The platform also covers the entire R&D chain through cloud services, enabling developers to perform simulations, training, and data management, while flexibly integrating hardware via SDK/API. It supports cross-body adaptation, modular support, and standardized products and emphasizes success rate and stability for real-world deployment.
For context, it’s not entirely new that they’re working on robotics; it’s just being noticed by the public now. Tencent Robotics X Lab was established in 2018 and is led by Dr. Zhang Zhengyou, focusing on advanced robotics research and application, aiming to develop next-generation robots for human intelligence enhancement, physical augmentation, emotional care, and human-machine collaboration.
Robotics X Lab has developed various mobile robots (Max, Ollie), manipulation robots (TRX-Hand, TRX-Arm), and industrial robots. Their latest human-residential robot, "The Five" (小五), launched in 2024, integrates a quad-legged wheeled design, large-area tactile skin, multi-finger dexterous hands, and safe human-robot physical interaction for complex tasks in human environments, including assisting with elderly care.
AI for Consumers: Leaning into the “AI for everyone” theme
Tencent's "AI Family Bucket" has evolved to encompass various “Life All-rounder," "Workplace Secretary," "Travel Planner," and "Content Creator," thereby creating an "AI Friend Circle" for users. AI capabilities are integrated into social platforms, tool applications, and cultural entertainment products, extending to every aspect of user production, life, travel, learning, and entertainment scenarios.
Yuanbao (元宝) is its proprietary chatbot tool that is the main interface for how WeChat users can access its Hunyuan LLM and DeepSeek. The AI assistant focuses on improving work and study efficiency. As mentioned, it supports Hunyuan and DeepSeek dual models for stable, smooth, and unlimited use. Yuanbao connects to Official Accounts and authoritative web sources, can read images, analyze files, create charts, and assist in logical reasoning, office work, knowledge learning, creative endeavors, and general life inquiries. It can be added as a WeChat friend, allowing users to interact with it like an AI friend. Yuanbao also offers AI video calls, utilizing the Hunyuan voice model for lower latency, more human-like, and emotional calls, with screen analysis capabilities.
ima: An AI workbench product centered around a knowledge base, integrating Tencent Hunyuan and DeepSeek R1 models. It helps users collect and interpret information, engage in AI Q&A and interaction, and generate content, creating a personalized knowledge base. ima supports various formats (Markdown, PPT), offers large storage capacity (up to 30G free), folder management, and allows sharing knowledge bases with others, making it a "shared brain" for teams. It is available on PC, mobile, and mini-programs.
QQ Browser (like a kind of outdated Chinese Safari): Upgraded to an AI browser with QBot, powered by Tencent Hunyuan and DeepSeek dual models. QBot offers five main functions: AI search, AI browsing, AI office, AI learning, and AI writing. It can also invoke Agents to perform complex tasks.
Consumer-end, this is probably the most well-known function and a big game changer for Tencent. The WeChat integration of Yuanbao can be added as an exclusive AI friend. Hunyuan large model integrates into WeChat's social ecosystem, bringing rich content services and smart experiences, including natural language mini-program generation (allowing users to create mini-programs without coding), AI search (in "搜一搜 search bar, integrates Hunyuan and DeepSeek), and AI WeChat Reading (AI Q&A within books for themes, summaries, key plots, knowledge points). Btw, Zichen Wang wrote a deep dive on the importance of WeChat for the newsletter Pekingnology.
AI Agents
Since OpenAI’s o3 and then Manus’ AI agent rollout, essentially every AI company is trying to build a better and more user-friendly agent AI tool. Many are leaning into their existing industry know-how or relationships to make more tailor-made tools.
As I mentioned earlier, Alibaba owns a business called Gaode Map, which is one of the most downloaded/ preferred navigation tools in China for drivers. This gives it a significant advantage in its wearable glasses. Tencent actually has a similar business called Tencent Maps. It has also rolled out a series of relatively niche products that, frankly, probably won't be major revenue generators, but are nice to have.
Leaning on that, Tencent has launched a Travel Planning Agent which offers a one-stop intelligent travel experience. It integrates travel guide generation, nearby search, attraction introductions, mini-program ordering, route planning, and editable itinerary saving. It's the first in the industry to link "map area + guide" interaction and support "save and re-edit" functionality for guides.
Smart Cockpit Service Assistant Agent: Integrates AI Agent capabilities with the WeChat mini-program ecosystem to provide services like dining orders, calendar meetings, queue number booking, and flight/hotel reservations, becoming a trusted travel service assistant for drivers. It uses long-term memory to understand user habits and offers natural, human-like AI interaction.
Learning Assistant Agent (QQ Browser QBot): Supports multi-modal input (text/image/voice) for problem-solving, explanation, key point extraction, 1-on-1 tutoring, and personalized learning plans.
Health Management Agent (Tencent Health): A visualized AI agent built on the Hunyuan large model, acting as a "health sentinel". It interprets physical examination and lab reports, dynamically analyzes health status, identifies potential risks, and provides targeted health management plans. It can also track health indicators and act as an "action coach" for long-term health benefits.
AI Gaokao Tong Agent (QQ Browser): The industry's first college entrance exam Agent. It leverages QQ Browser's 7 years of accumulated authoritative college entrance exam knowledge (nearly 3000 institutions, 1600+ majors). It helps students quickly get comprehensive information, intelligently generate personalized volunteer schemes (with three tiers), and provides a detailed report within 3-5 minutes. It also offers AI Q&A and AI essay tutoring for exam preparation.
AI for Enterprise
At the offline WeChat event in Hong Kong, I was quite intrigued by the enterprise AI functions that the team has rolled out. Because given its ubiquitous nature, many people use WeCom (微信企业) as the default tool for Zoom-like calls and a file sharing cloud platform that is offered by WeCom (partially why ByteDance’s Lark and Alibaba’s DingTalk did not do that great in capturing marketshare. There is no one clear winner like Slack for China.
Knowledge Worker/ Enterprise Productivity Tools
Enterprise WeChat - Smart Tables: Features a new AI engine that revolutionizes traditional data processing. It introduces "AI Fields" with four breakthrough capabilities: AI Smart Classification (for customer grading, feedback categorization, risk tagging), AI Smart Summary (extracts core conclusions from long reports), AI Image Understanding (for patrol inspections, financial invoice info extraction), and AI Content Generation (for marketing copy and scripts).
Tencent Meeting - AI Assistant Pro: An intelligent agent designed for meeting scenarios. It helps users quickly review and summarize past meeting information, supports real-time Q&A, analysis, and summary during meetings, and intelligently generates meeting minutes and post-meeting to-do lists. It also offers automatic captions, camera tracking, multi-person screen sharing, and smart noise reduction.
Tencent Docs - AI Document Assistant: Fully integrated into Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, Smart Docs, forms, and mind maps. Users can use "one-sentence" commands for intelligent office work and efficient creation. It offers smart analysis, data visualization with AI algorithms, document summarization, Q&A, and outline generation. It also supports one-click PPT beautification and cross-category information processing, such as generating PPTs from mind maps or summarizing PPTs into Word documents. Tencent Docs serves over 200 million monthly active users and 1.2 million enterprises/organizations.
Qidian Marketing Cloud Agent: Based on large model inference, multi-agent architecture, marketing knowledge base, and MCP technology, it automates tasks like audience extraction, persona analysis, product optimization, content generation, and activity review for marketing.
TCDataAgent: A data analysis agent from Tencent Cloud, enabling users to use natural language for complex data queries, report generation, and trend analysis on structured and unstructured data. It ranked third globally and first in China on the BIRD-Bench NL2SQL leaderboard.
A.I.G Agent (AI-Infra-Guard): A comprehensive, intelligent, easy-to-use, and lightweight AI infrastructure and MCP service security vulnerability scanning and automated Prompt security evaluation agent.
Wukong Code Security Detection Agent: A high-efficiency, accurate, and intelligent automated code auditing, vulnerability mining, and fixing agent based on multi-agent collaboration.
TWeTalkAgent (Voice Intelligent Agent): A software-hardware integrated AI dialogue solution for smart hardware, focusing on voice agents and real-time audio/video communication. It integrates Tencent ecosystem resources (WeChat calls, WeChat Pay, QQ Music) and is applied in AI companion toys, robots, smart wearables, and more.
TWeSeeAgent (Visual Intelligent Agent): A new generation Visual Agent solution that transforms traditional video surveillance into an intelligent system with active perception, semantic understanding, smart interaction, and scenario closed-loop capabilities through "edge-cloud collaborative multi-modal perception + scenario-based decision engine".
CodeBuddy Agent: Tencent's self-developed AI-assisted programming tool for developers, powered by Tencent Hunyuan + DeepSeek dual models. It offers AI technical Q&A, the new development intelligent agent Craft, code completion, unit testing, code diagnosis, and intelligent review. It supports team knowledge base management, custom intelligent agents, multi-model integration, and enterprise account integration. Tencent internal engineers use it for over 85% of their coding, reducing average coding time by over 40% and increasing AI-generated code by over 40%.
Qimiao Digital Human (奇妙数字人): Tencent Advertising's "Marvelous Digital Human" (奇妙数字人) first appeared at WAIC. It's a commercial AI solution combining "Miaosi" (commercial content AIGC production) and "Miaobo" (AI livestreaming e-commerce) platforms. It offers over 3000 industry digital human images, supports 1:1 real-person customization, and can restore real voices. It has been applied in the catering, apparel, tourism, and education industries. It boosts material generation efficiency by 50%, per capita efficiency by 300%, and reduces livestreaming costs by over 90%.
Industry Verticals
Various other tools include digital flight simulator tools that were co-developed with China Southern Airlines, Game Visual generation using Hunyuan, which is said to be the first industrial-grade AIGC game content production engine, educational tools, and so on. Lastly, to note, beyond Tencent’s social media and gaming business units, what is often not as well known in the West is that it also has a big entertainment segment, which is categorized under the Digital Content category.
Tencent Music Entertainment: Showcases AI song creation (generating songs from text or images), the world's first all-AI singer "AI Leehom" (developed with Wang Leehom's studio, featuring AI-generated voice, visuals, and derivatives), AI musician (converting popular songs into different instrument sounds like piano, guzheng), and AI singing (recording 30s of voice to "sing" any song in high quality).
2025Q1 Financial Results Presentation Dark Zone Breakout (FPS Game): Features F.A.C.U.L., the world's first FPS AI teammate that understands complex player commands and has scenario recognition ability. It can provide intelligence feedback, resource sharing, and tactical discussions.
Holographic Cabin: Based on Tencent's audio/video algorithms, it converts photos into various artistic styles (anime, 3D, watercolor, illustration, clay, jade) with optimized human portrait effects.
Smart Claw Machine: Uses Tencent Cloud Real-Time Communication (TRTC) for remote control, offering stable service, clear picture, and low end-to-end latency (under 300ms) for an immersive experience.
AI Newsstand: Uses YouTu Lab's self-developed image-to-image algorithm to transform images into various styles (anime, 3D, watercolor, illustration, clay, jade).
Conclusion
Anyway, the list goes on, and it’s quite overwhelming. If you look at the list of tools, the most important ones I think to note are its WeChat integration tools and its WeComm enterprise tools.
Other tools are pretty niche, and as Tencent is known to all work in silo (product managers to product managers do not vibe/ share info), it’s often an internal competition. For example, the WeChat team is located in Guangdong, and the headquarters is in Shenzhen. Tencent Games and Tencent Media teams are based in separate cities/ offices.
It's not entirely apples-to-apples, but similar to Meta, where WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook operate independently with separate corporate and product teams, Tencent’s main businesses like Games, WeChat, and others also function independently. Then there is a group-level corporate team, such as the legal, IR, and PR teams, which consolidates the businesses under the same P&L for the listed company that is then overseen by the C-levels.
Thus, even people internally say that sometimes it feels like there is a lack of synergy or high-level strategy within Tencent that you are seeing implemented by Alibaba and ByteDance top-down. But what that translates to is that you can probably expect product managers to kill for resources and try to compete with each other within the firm, much like teammates within the same F1 team, to try to develop the next killer tool, much like Zhang Xiaolong did with WeChat in the OG days.
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Könnte man sagen, die Chinesen versuchen mühsam, Anschluss an die Entwicklung in Deutschland zu halten? ;-)