Yao Shunyu, the former OpenAI researcher now leading Tencent Holdings’ artificial intelligence model development, pushed back against concerns that the tech giant is slow in AI, arguing that the race is just beginning with massive untapped opportunities in coding agents and embodied intelligence. “AI is a long-term game, with the second half of the race just starting,” said Yao, chief AI scientist at Tencent, comparing the current state to the development of personal computers in the 1970s. Yao...
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek is finalising its first external fundraising round, securing over 50 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion) at a valuation of just under US$60 billion, according to people familiar with the matter – marking a six-fold leap from its US$10 billion valuation in April. The blockbuster round highlights intensifying global competition and a shifting strategy for the AI breakout star, which had previously resisted external capital. Market-oriented investors and...
Shares of Tencent Holdings surged as much as 8 per cent on Tuesday, driven by investor optimism over reports that the Chinese tech giant is close to launching an artificial intelligence agent within its super app WeChat. Tencent was testing a prototype AI agent for the WeChat ecosystem, which boasts 1.4 billion active users, and planned to start the compliance process as soon as this month for a public launch, according to a report by the Financial Times on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. The...
Chinese tech companies are racing to deploy artificial intelligence models into robots, shifting the battleground for generative AI from digital chatbots to physical autonomous systems. Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen3.7-Max model, launched last week, features “tool-calling” capabilities that allow the AI model to act as a digital brain to trigger external software and hardware components. The company said the model could be used to control robots by orchestrating physical actions like navigation,...
For years, Liu Wei was synonymous with Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings’ artificial intelligence efforts. A distinguished scientist at the Shenzhen-based company, Liu was also head of its Hunyuan team, the firm’s foundational model development unit for the generative AI era. But in late 2024, Liu’s departure from Tencent after more than eight years sparked immediate speculation as to why he left. Hunyuan was introduced only a year earlier – so why did Liu suddenly quit one of China’s most...
Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are doubling down on a massive artificial intelligence spending spree, betting that a new wave of Chinese-made chips will break the supply bottlenecks stifling their ambitions. While both Chinese tech giants saw revenues trail expectations this quarter, they pledged an aggressive acceleration in capital expenditure, as home-grown silicon from Huawei Technologies and Alibaba’s in-house labs begins to reach scale. Alibaba was likely to “overshoot” its...
Facing scrutiny and persistent questions over its track record in artificial intelligence, Tencent Holdings’ co-founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng offered this candid assessment to shareholders on Wednesday: “A year ago we thought we were on the boat, then we found it was leaking.” Speaking at the firm’s annual general meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, Ma signalled the beginnings of a turnaround, saying that the company had finally found its footing but was “not yet seated”, according...