(Bloomberg) – Tencent Holdings Ltd. has described the plans to strongly increase spending on IA infrastructure after having displayed its fastest income rate of income since 2023, showing that the most precious company in China intends to keep up with the pace of rivals in the post-feec.
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Revenues increased by 11% to 172.5 billion yuan ($ 23.8 billion) for the three months finished in December, while net profit almost doubled. The company has also unveiled plans to buy at least $ 80 billion HK of shares and proposed an increase of 32% in its annual dividend for 2025. The shares of Prosus NV, a large shareholder, climbed more than 2% in Europe.
Tencent sketched a more measured approach to artificial intelligence than Arch-Foe Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., who declared last month that he went to the development of AI. The founder of the billionaire Pony Ma described how Tencent has “careful consideration” to rely both on internal and open source models – in the same way as he publishes his own games and third parties.
Tencent intends to market AI by strengthening services such as advertising and WeChat, while spending research to keep pace with Alibaba and Deepseek, whose emergence in January galvanized the global development of AI. Tencent plans to devote a low adolescence percentage of its revenues from 2025 to capital expenses, including on IA infrastructure – more than $ 10 billion, based on the planned sales of analysts this year.
“The AI is in fact at a very early stage, so it is really difficult to speak of the possible state,” said President Martin Lau to analysts on a post-results briefing. But each of the consumer -oriented applications of Tencent “will continue to become a very useful and even more powerful product for users”.
Tencent has increased its purchases of AI chips in the last quarter of 2024 to respond to increased demand, which should result in faster Cloud income growth, managers said. The company works around American restrictions on the most powerful semiconductors of Nvidia Corp. Strategy Director James Mitchell said Deepseek has, however, demonstrated how it is possible to reach the breakthroughs for less, and the time himself favored the cases of use of “great value”.
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Tencent is among the main names of Chinese technology to report this week, ending a season of near winnings for a dollar billion sector which completes a corner.
President Xi Jinping last month met eminent entrepreneurs, including the head of Tencent, and the co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, signaling Beijing’s softening position towards a private sector which he assailed over three years. Founders also represented a new generation of founders representing industries such as the manufacture of chiffs, electric vehicles and AI, echoing the priorities of XI during a technological confrontation against the United States.
This symposium occurred only a few weeks after Deepseek, based in Hangzhou, launched a model that rivals Openai while needing much less computer resources.
The R1 of the Chinese startup has sparked an intruder from the soul among the giants of Chinese technology, which now accelerates the release of similar model upgrades or increasing investments in the IA infrastructure. Alibaba has made one of the most dramatic movements by committing to spending more than $ 50 billion on its AI and Cloud Computing networks over the next three years. The CEO of the Electronic Commerce CEO declared that the general artificial intelligence – the capacity of AI similar to humans – is now its “main objective”.
Tencent has won around 30% or 140 billion dollars in market assessment so far this year, helped by a larger Chinese technological rally induced by the rise of Deepseek. But that is lagging behind 70% in ALIBABA shares, at the Rival Arch, whose QWEN model underlies one of the most popular IA services in the country.
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Tencent’s unchanged emphasis on the use of internal artificial intelligence, in particular in advertisements and video games, has a greater chance of generating an immediate reimbursement than its peers. The statement of Perspectives 4Q of Tencent lacked the Big Bang approach to AI View of Alibaba, which is more focused on cloud computing and less certain long -term opportunities in general artificial intelligence (AG). Tencent confirmed that he had reorganized his AI teams to refine his goal.
– Robert Lea and Jasmine Lyu, analyst
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Tencent plays the catch -up. He integrated the open models of Deepseek into services such as WeChat Search and his Yuanbao chatbot, which has briefly become the most downloaded application on the country on iPhone. With Peacekeeper Elite, one of the two biggest tencent game titles, Deepseek is the foundation of a new virtual assistant who teaches players how to shoot. On Tuesday, he published AI services that transform text or images into 3D visuals and graphics, potentially rationalizing the often long and expensive studio development process.
“Tencent has historically caught up a subsequent stage, narrowing the gap from the market share or even exceeding the first mover, supported by its single WeChat ecosystem,” wrote Goldman Sachs analysts, including Ronald Keung, in a note before the results. Super-applies like WeChat and Bytedance Ltd. Douyin are best placed to exploit the IA application or agent opportunities, they said.
With a billion users, WeChat remains the most reliable asset in Tencent because he assumes a more important role of monetization in the fields of mini-game advertising and online commerce. It also reflects the economic environment via services such as hiking delivery and meal delivery – although the Fintech division which incorporates this payment network is now the most stagnant unit in Tencent.
Tencent marked last year with outings of Dungeon & Fighter Mobile games from Nexon Co. to his own PC Delta Force shooter – titles he intends to become so -called persistent leaf franchises that can generate stable species.
But there is no guarantee that he could repeat this feat in 2025. Tencent joined global peers in the development of the reduction in development work while realizing its concentration on fewer key titles. His pipeline remains strong with a handful of probable tubes, including Honor of Kings: World, Monster Hunter Outlanders and the Chinese Liberation of the Victory Goddess: Nikke.
– With the help of Vlad Savov, Claire Che, Luz Ding, Debby Wu and Charlotte Yang.
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