Key Takeaways
- Tencent views its dominant WeChat platform as a critical advantage in China’s artificial intelligence race.
- WeChat’s “super-app” status, combining messaging, payments, and numerous services for its vast user base, provides a unique foundation for AI.
- While developing a general AI assistant, Tencent’s core strategy focuses on AI deeply integrated within the WeChat ecosystem.
- This specialized in-app AI is expected to offer distinct capabilities by leveraging WeChat’s diverse content and services.
WeChat is an indispensable part of daily life in China, far more than just a messaging service. With an astonishing 14 billion monthly users, according to CNBC, it functions as a “super-app” enabling everything from mobile payments and gaming to booking flights and paying utility bills.
Tencent executives believe this sprawling ecosystem will give them a significant edge in China’s fiercely competitive artificial intelligence arena, where tech giants are investing billions to lead the way.
During a recent earnings call, the Shenzhen-based company discussed “agentic AI,” a major focus for tech firms globally. Broadly, this refers to AI designed to proactively carry out tasks for users, like prompting your phone’s AI to book a restaurant, which it would then do across various apps.
This concept is similar to what Google is developing with Gemini on Android devices or what chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT offer. Tencent has its own chatbot, Yuanbao, which it aims to develop into a “general agentic AI.”
However, this will compete with products from industry rivals such as Alibaba’s Quark and Baidu’s Ernie. Tencent President Martin Lau admitted that such a general AI might not be “much different” from what competitors offer.
The real differentiator, Lau explained, lies in a second product: AI specifically designed to operate within WeChat, or Weixin as it’s known in China.
“Within the Weixin ecosystem there is the opportunity for us to create a pretty unique agentic AI,” Lau said. He highlighted WeChat’s features like content creation, messaging, and its “Mini Programs”—apps that run inside WeChat.
These elements provide access to “all kinds of information as well as transactional and operative capabilities across many different verticals of applications,” Lau noted. He believes this will be “extremely unique compared to other more general agentic AIs and that’s sort of a very differentiated product for us.”
Tencent has already started introducing AI tools in WeChat for functions like search and content generation. Lau’s remarks underscore Tencent’s long-term vision as the AI competition in China intensifies.
