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Coco Feng

Tencent Holdings, which operates the world’s largest video gaming business by revenue and Chinese super app WeChat, is seeing its investments in artificial intelligence (AI) pay off, as the Shenzhen-based firm posted its best quarter on record since listing in Hong Kong in 2004.
That assessment was highlighted by Tencent co-founder, chairman and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng on Wednesday after the country’s most valuable technology company – with around US$600 billion in market capitalisation – reported better-than-expected financial results in the first quarter from a year earlier, as revenue rose 13 per cent and profit grew 14 per cent.
“AI capabilities already contributed tangibly to businesses, such as performance advertising and evergreen games,” Ma said. “We expect these strategic AI investments to create value for users and society, and generate substantial incremental returns for us over the longer term.”
Tencent has stepped up investments on AI opportunities amid the rapid developments in the field being pursued by internet peers like Alibaba Group Holding, Baidu and ByteDance, as well as innovative start-ups such as DeepSeek. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
On Thursday, Tencent’s cloud computing unit said in a social media post that using a large language model (LLM) – the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT – has helped build smarter non-player characters (NPCs) for BUD, a user-generated open metaverse game and 3D interactive platform from Shenzhen-based studio Point One.
Powered by Tencent’s Hunyuan AI model, NPCs in BUD do not stick to a fixed narrative. These characters can be programmed to quarrel with each other and react to players’ actions, the post said.
A similar collaboration was announced last month between Tencent Cloud and Giant Network Group, creator of social deduction game Space Party. The game had about 7 million AI-generated characters with “independent logic chains” powered by Tencent’s fast-reasoning AI model, Hunyuan Turbo S.
Tencent has used AI on its own mobile games. In February, the company’s battle royale game Peacekeeper Elite – the Chinese version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile – adopted DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model for the game’s digital ambassador Gilly, who chats with players concerning new updates, weapons recommendations and winning strategies.

Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed share price was largely unchanged at HK$520 on Thursday.
“High-quality revenue growth [for the company] stands out [because of] AI integration in different segments,” Jefferies analysts Thomas Chong and Zoey Zong wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
Tencent, for example, said on Wednesday that it rolled out AI features within Weixin – the mainland Chinese brand name for WeChat – “to provide more interactive user experiences and increase productivity for content creators and developers”.
The company’s AI chatbot, Yuanbao, was added as a Weixin contact for users. The firm’s own LLM was used to power Weixin Search and provided a text-prompt image-generating tool for the super app’s Official Accounts feature.
“We upgraded our advertising technology platform with enhanced generative AI capabilities, such as improved image generation and video editing,” Tencent said. That helped accelerate advertisement creation, use of “digital human” solutions for live-streaming activities, and provided a deeper understanding of merchandise and user interests to deliver better user recommendations, according to the company.
That resulted in a 20 per cent year-on-year jump in first-quarter revenue from marketing services. Tencent primarily attributed that rise to “robust advertiser demand for video accounts [on WeChat], mini programs and Weixin search inventories”, as user engagement increased.
In March, Tencent launched a so-called AI advertising optimiser that creates campaigns and provide 24/7 monitoring of their performance. One of the AI tools introduced by Tencent designs advertisements with existing product photos.
The surging demand for AI technology has, at the same time, driven “Tencent Cloud’s AI-related revenue to grow at a high rate”, according to a Thursday research note by Changjiang Securities.
Revenue from the fintech and business services segment, meanwhile, rose 5 per cent in the March quarter, “driven by an increase in cloud services revenue”, according to Tencent.


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Tencent CEO Pony Ma says strategic AI investments ‘create value for users and society’, while generating substantial returns for the firm


Tencent CEO Pony Ma says strategic AI investments ‘create value for users and society’, while generating substantial returns for the firm.


How AI investments are paying off for Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Tencent CEO Pony Ma says strategic AI investments ‘create value for users and society’, while generating substantial returns for the firm

Tencent CEO Pony Ma says strategic AI investments ‘create value for users and society’, while generating substantial returns for the firm