Has Tencent Fallen Behind in the AI Race?

Deep News01-21 12:51

Two years ago, Ma Huateng identified AI as an industrial revolution-level opportunity, yet Tencent appeared to be "a step slow" in the 2024-2025 AI competition, only evolving its AI strategy from individual products to a large-scale ecosystem integration by 2025. On December 17, 2025, Tencent upgraded its large language model R&D structure, establishing three new departments spearheaded by top talent Yao Shunyu. Since 2018, Tencent's cumulative R&D investment has exceeded 400 billion yuan. In 2026, Yao Shunyu declared that AI had entered its second half, signaling a shift in the core focus of competition. Tencent has achieved significant results in deploying products for both consumer (C-end) and business (B-end) users, while also driving a comprehensive internal transformation towards AI integration. Tencent Cloud became profitable in 2025, boasting advantages in its intelligent computing infrastructure and having built a complete system to support Agentic AI. As the AI competition enters this next phase, Tencent's ecosystem and other strengths provide the foundation for a potential come-from-behind victory.

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