The DeepSeek fire made Tencent the biggest winner. Why the Goose Factory?

Wen| Jiang Han’s Vision

Recently, whenever we talk about AI, DeepSeek will definitely be a topic that cannot be avoided. Almost all companies in China are talking about DeepSeek for a while. It seems that without saying DeepSeek is already outdated. Various major manufacturers are rushing to get involved in DeepSeek. However, what people didn’t expect is that the ones who benefited the most from the trend of DeepSeek are not those pioneers in the field of AI models, but Tencent, which is relatively backward in AI. Goose Factory has become the biggest winner. What’s going on?

1. Did the DeepSeek fire make Tencent the biggest winner?

According to a report by China Newsweek, contemporary migrant workers ‘preference for AI plug-ins has changed again. In the App Store’s free App rankings in China, Tencent Yuanbao surpassed the bean buns owned by ByteDance, ranking second only to DeepSeek. For Tencent Yuanbao, this achievement can be said to have made great progress. Qimai data shows that 10 days ago, it ranked 234th in the same ranking, almost to the extent that there was no such person. This is also the normal performance after it was officially launched at the end of May last year.

Observing netizens ‘experience of using Tencent Yuanbao on social media in recent days, keywords generally focus on the silky DeepSeek experience. The reason for this evaluation also starts from Tencent Yuanbao’s version update on February 13. At that time, the full-blood version of DeepSeek-R1 671B was officially connected to Tencent Yuanbao, which was available for users to choose from together with Tencent’s self-developed mixed model. In the introduction of Tencent Yuanbao’s version at the time, DeepSeek’s reasoning ability was written a lot.

Public information shows that relying on Tencent’s network hardware service capabilities and Tencent Cloud’s computing power, users can reduce network jams through Tencent Yuanbao calls and feel faster response speed compared to directly using the DeepSeek ontology.

This hits the pain point of many ordinary users. After being thought in circles for a long time, DeepSeek only said that the server is busy. Please try again later. They have hurt them many times. They are eager to find a solution to DeepSeek’s busy server. As the first large-scale AI assistant product to introduce third-party models, Tencent Yuanbao has gradually become the preferred choice.

According to a report by the Economic Observer, in early February, when many major AI model manufacturers such as Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud connected to the DeepSeek-R1 model, employees of many major manufacturers, including Tencent, thought that this might be just a move the company made to the cloud service department to embrace the fiery DeepSeek, and had nothing to do with them. DeepSeek, which is connected to Yuanbao, has gained the ability to interpret images, parse attachments in multiple formats, search Weixin Official Accounts online, and upload files from WeChat. However, DeepSeek’s official application currently only supports Wensheng and parsing text attachments.

This change is very different: not only does DeepSeek integrate the multimodal understanding capabilities of mixed elements, but it also has to open up core information sources of Tencent’s ecosystem such as Weixin Official Accounts and video accounts.

In addition, Tencent’s products have launched an AI team battle: more than ten products such as Tencent Documents, QQ Browser, QQ Music, Tencent Maps, Enterprise WeChat, and Licaitong are collectively connected to DeepSeek-R1 and the Mixed Origin Model.

2. Why did the goose factory finally run away?

In this craze surrounding DeepSeek, Tencent unexpectedly became the biggest winner. What are the underlying reasons behind this? How should we look at this?

First of all, the deep bundling between Tencent and DeepSeek has become the basis for its rush. When major Internet companies introduced DeepSeek into their own business systems, most manufacturers only used DeepSeek as an ordinary open source model, and only stayed at the superficial level of function calls. In sharp contrast, Tencent has demonstrated unique strategic vision and strong execution, deeply bundling DeepSeek with its own huge ecosystem. Tencent has launched a comprehensive access model for the whole family. Its various products and services, from social platforms to game businesses, from office software to content creation tools, all incorporate DeepSeek’s technological advantages.

Tencent’s entire family is fully connected to DeepSeek, which means that many of Tencent’s products and services incorporate DeepSeek’s technology. For example, Tencent’s social platforms, game platforms, entertainment platforms, etc. may use DeepSeek’s capabilities to be optimized and innovated. This comprehensive access strategy makes Tencent the most comprehensive DeepSeek enterprise among the entire Internet giant. Taking corporate WeChat as an example, according to reports from Southern Metropolis Daily, on February 21, a new version of corporate WeChat was launched, officially releasing AI functions such as intelligent robot smart form-customer follow-up summary, and gray-scale access to the full-blood version of DeepSeek-R1 big model. Enterprises can create a dedicated intelligent assistant based on their internal knowledge base with one click, and can also automatically summarize customer follow-up status with one click. Under such circumstances, the office processing efficiency of corporate WeChat has made a qualitative leap.

Since Tencent’s many products cover multiple aspects of user lives, through DeepSeek’s integrated analysis of user data in these products, Tencent can gain a deeper understanding of users ‘needs, behavioral patterns, etc. This will help Tencent further optimize product design and develop new features, thereby increasing user loyalty and activity. At the same time, this deep bundling has also established a unique competitive advantage for Tencent in the market competition. It is difficult for other manufacturers to compete with DeepSeek’s single function. This is the basis for Tencent’s sudden explosion.

Secondly, the advantages of the original self-developed AI model are not obvious, but it is better to turn around. In the past wave of AI, Tencent also launched its own AI model Mixed Origin. However, Hunyuan was launched relatively late, and compared with similar products from other Internet manufacturers, its promotion efforts are slightly insufficient. This led to a significant gap between Hunyuan and its competitors ‘products in terms of user volume, and it was always difficult to achieve a breakthrough in market share. In such an unfavorable situation, DeepSeek’s appearance was like a timely rain, bringing a strategic turn for Tencent.

Because Tencent’s previous investment in Hunyuan was relatively limited, and Hunyuan has not yet formed strong user stickiness and brand influence in the market, this makes it cheaper for Tencent to turn around when facing DeepSeek. Tencent does not need to worry about excessive historical burdens and obstacles from existing interest patterns, and can fully embrace DeepSeek more decisively and quickly. This flexibility and rapid response ability allow Tencent to adjust its strategic direction in a short period of time, integrate DeepSeek into its own business system, achieve rapid catch-up with competitors, and even surpass them in some aspects. Compared with those manufacturers that have invested heavily in their own big models and are difficult to transform easily, Tencent, with the help of DeepSeek, has gained valuable opportunities to re-layout and seize market share.

Third, Tencent’s strong social attributes make it easier to collaborate with DeepSeek. On the one hand, Tencent has strong social advantages. Its Weixin Official Accounts, Video Accounts, Penguin and other content platforms have massive content. These content can provide DeepSeek with a rich data source. As a big model, DeepSeek requires a large amount of data for training and optimization, and Tencent’s content platforms can meet its data needs. For example, the articles on Weixin Official Accounts cover knowledge, opinions and information in various fields. DeepSeek can learn knowledge in language expression, semantic understanding and other aspects through analyzing these articles. The video content in the video number can also provide data support for DeepSeek in aspects such as video content understanding and visual information processing. The various creative content on the Penguin can also enrich DeepSeek’s training data.

On the other hand, Tencent’s strong social attributes allow more people to directly apply DeepSeek in their daily work and life. On Tencent’s social platforms, information spreads between users very quickly and widely. When DeepSeek and Tencent’s products are deeply integrated, users can quickly understand and use DeepSeek’s functions through the social relationship chain. Compared to installing a separate APP, Tencent’s use method is undoubtedly more convenient. For example, in WeChat chat, users can directly call DeepSeek’s functions to perform intelligent Q & A, text generation and other operations; in Tencent’s office software, users can also use DeepSeek’s capabilities for document processing, intelligent collaboration, etc. This convenience can attract more users to use DeepSeek, and due to Tencent’s huge user base, DeepSeek can quickly gain widespread application and dissemination.

Fourth, can DeepSeek help Tencent continue to lead? In the nearly two years when AI products have been fiercely competing for users, the emergence of DeepSeek has undoubtedly become a key factor for Tencent to achieve overtaking in corners. With DeepSeek, Tencent has quickly improved the intelligence level of its products and services in a short period of time, successfully stood on the same level with other competitors, and even achieved a lead in some aspects. The achievement of this achievement fully demonstrates Tencent’s strong capabilities in technical integration and strategic layout.

However, we must be soberly aware that rushing is only the first step. For Tencent, the real challenge to maintain its advantage in long-term competition is how to make AI completely change people’s lives. This requires Tencent to continuously optimize various services based on DeepSeek to make them more convenient, fast and intelligent. In the future, Tencent needs to further explore DeepSeek’s application potential in various fields. Countless historical cases tell us that temporary success can only help companies seize a good ecological niche or first-mover advantage. Only through continuous innovation and optimization, and providing users with better and efficient AI services can it be possible to gain user recognition and support in the long-term competition and truly become a leader in the AI era.

Therefore, DeepSeek’s success has indeed brought huge opportunities to Tencent, allowing it to narrow the gap with other competitors in a short period of time, but what should we do next? How to maintain these advantages? It still tests Tencent managers.