(Bloomberg) – Tencent Holdings Ltd. has described the plans to strongly increase spending on AI infrastructure after having displayed its fastest income growth rate since 2023, which suggests that the most precious company in China intends to keep up with the rivals in the post-production era.
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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 also unveiled plans to buy at least $ 80 billion HK in shares and proposed a 32% increase in its annual dividend for 2025. Prosus NV shares, a large shareholder, won more than 1% in Europe.
The most precious company in China has highlighted its AI ambitions – an objective for investors wishing to know how it will market artificial intelligence and follow the pace of competitors such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. After the emergence of Deepseek galvanized development. 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 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. It plans to use AI to support a wide range of services from its main WeChat service to content. 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.
“We have adopted a double heart technical strategy,” said it to journalists during a briefing. “Throughout our trip to the game industry, we have always emphasized a balanced approach between self-developed and licensed games, which complement each other and ultimately offer the best user experience.
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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 undertaken to spend more than $ 50 billion on its AI and Cloud Computing networks over the next three years, declaring the capacities of the human type 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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