Tencent seeks new “ticket”

Wen| Hunting Cloud Select Shao Yangang

This time it is Tencent’s turn to promote large-scale C-side applications.

With DeepSeek, Tencent is buying crazily for Yuanbao APP. Recently, Yuanbao’s advertisements have been swept across almost all Tencent platforms, including WeChat, QQ, Tencent Video, etc. The Jiugongge of WeChat’s daily service has also opened up a new location for Yuanbao. Even Yuanbao is common on mainstream platforms such as Station B, Zhihu, and Baidu.

Both users and friends were shocked by Tencent’s promotion efforts. According to Caijing World Weekly quoted AppGrowing platform data, as of February 27, Tencent Yuanbao spent a total of 281 million yuan on launch in 27 days. The huge amount of capital investment has also brought tangible results.

As of the evening of March 3, Tencent Yuanbao climbed to first place in the App Store’s free list in China, surpassing DeepSeek.

In addition, there are still doubts about how long the Yuanbao users attracted by Tencent’s money will last and whether they can ultimately help Tencent build the next super app. But behind Yuan Bao, Tencent may not be anxious to rush to the next game.

As a late manufacturer among giants to release large models, Tencent has been exploring the industrial applications of AI in the past two years. For a long time, Tencent has struggled to outperform the C-end market. In the era of big models, can Tencent’s Yuanbao push win Tencent a ticket?

Tencent, which entered the market late, suddenly accelerated

On May 30, 2024, Tencent officially released the large model APP Tencent Yuanbao. At that time, there were so many AI assistant software on the market such as Wenxinyiyan, Doubao, Kimi, Tiangong, and Zhipu Qingyan that they had become a product category.

In addition, based on the consideration of seizing market opportunities, Doubao, Kimi, etc. are vigorously promoted in the market. Bean buns have repeatedly appeared in byte series products. Using their vigorous miracle style, they quickly accumulated a group of users, and even downloaded bean buns on the mobile phones of young people in towns and villages. Therefore, Doubao quickly became the first AI application in China with a user scale exceeding 100 million.

By 2025, both Doubao and Kimi will be reducing their investment budgets. According to relevant reports on February 18 this year, Kimi’s parent company, Dark Side, decided to significantly reduce its product launch budget, including suspending the launch of multiple Android channels and cooperation with third-party advertising platforms.

At this time, DeepSeek was in the limelight.

At a time when the strategies of many large model APP competing products are shrinking, Tencent Yuanbao, which has been lukewarm before, is moving against the trend. According to DataEye data, before February 15, the advertising volume of bean buns and Kimi far exceeded that of Yuanbao. However, the advertising volume of Yuanbao began to increase slightly on February 15, and rose sharply on February 18. On February 23, the number of materials released in a single day exceeded 11,000 groups, becoming the first of the three.

Nowadays, in the WeChat circle of friends, you can find an advertisement for Yuanbao with just a few clicks, and this situation has been going on for some time. As Tencent’s internal promotion channel, WeChat is obviously one of the main forces promoting Yuanbao. In the WeChat life service section, Yuanbao Download exists as a new module. In addition to WeChat, the same is true for Tencent software platforms such as Tencent Video, Qzone, and QQ Music. This comprehensive approach is no different from Byte’s promotion of bean buns.

Leveraging the momentum of DeepSeek, Tencent Yuanbao spent hundreds of millions of yuan on launch in February, especially after February 13. According to Caijing World Weekly, as of February 27, Tencent Yuanbao spent a total of 281 million yuan on launch in 27 days, most of which occurred after February 13.

According to point data, Tencent Yuanbao has been launched since May 30, 2024. Before February this year, its daily downloads (excluding domestic Android) peaked at only 36,000, but it has soared since mid-February. As of February 23, the cumulative iOS downloads in the Yuanbao mainland market are estimated to be around 3.68 million.

Investment is immediate. On February 22, Tencent Yuanbao’s downloads exceeded Doubao for the first time. According to Apple APP Store data, as of March 3, Yuan Bao ranked first in the Apple free APP download rankings in China and surpassed DeepSeek. According to QuestMobile data, on February 9, Yuanbao’s DAU was only a few hundred thousand, just a fraction of DeepSeek’s. In addition to traffic competition, Yuanbao has experienced its most frequent update cycle in the past three weeks since its official release in May last year.

When Tencent Yuanbao went online, Tencent Yuanbao claimed that it was not prepared to push the volume of online purchases, nor did it plan to increase the overall scale of competing products. Today, Tencent is pushing Yuanbao to the front line of Tencent’s big model strategy.

In terms of time, on February 13, after Tencent Yuanbao connected to the DeepSeek-R1 full-blood version, it also supported the two major models of Tencent Mixed Origin and DeepSeek, and switched to a dual-engine drive of self-developed Mixed Origin + open source DeepSeek.

On February 15, Tencent borrowed WeChat, the king of traffic on China’s social media, and connected DeepSeek-R1 for grayscale testing.

On February 17, gray scale launched the in-depth thinking model mixed color T1.

On February 18, Tencent Yuanbao fully supported WeChat search. Users who have not been searched by AI before will enter WeChat search in the search bar at the top of the WeChat dialog box, and will also go to Tencent Yuanbao’s download channel.

On February 19, the deep thinking model Mixed Origin T1 was launched in full on Tencent Yuanbao. The two major models of Mixed Origin +DeepSeek are all free and unlimited.

On February 21, Tencent Yuanbao supported DeepSeek to understand picture information. DeepSeek in Yuanbao can not only scan the text in pictures, but also directly read pictures.

On February 25, Tencent Yuanbao’s UI was upgraded and supported one-click export and sharing of long images.

On March 1, Tencent Yuanbao launched the Hybrid Turbo S, which is Tencent Hybrid’s latest fast-thinking model. Compared with the previous generation, the pronunciation speed has doubled, and the first word delay has been reduced by 44%.

Also on March 1, Tencent Yuanbao computer version was officially launched. At present, Yuanbao has covered multiple ports such as mobile, computer/Mac, and web to meet the AI needs of different scenarios.

In just a few weeks, Tencent Yuanbao achieved a qualitative leap through high-frequency technical iterations, and continuously completed work deployments such as DeepSeek-R1 access, Hybrid T1 deployment, WeChat search integration, multimodal analysis, and multi-segment coordination, becoming the most powerful among giants.

What imagination does Tencent have under the anxiety of the C-end entrance of the big model?

Technology giants have been exploring the C-side entrance of large models and constantly trial and error. Tencent’s strategy for large models is industry priority. Tencent, which has always been strong on the C-side, is very cautious this time.

Different from B-end products, C-end products pay more attention to first-mover advantages. In terms of large model products, Tencent released its self-developed Mixed Model in September 2023, which is nearly half a year later than Baidu, five months later than Ali, and two months later than Huawei.

However, Tencent said that in half a year, there was almost no first-mover advantage for the large model market at that time, because the AI penetration rate was less than 1% at that time.

Nowadays, the prospects for AI applications continue to expand, and major manufacturers are bound to seize the C-side entrance of large-scale model applications. For Tencent, this step is equally important, and Tencent’s anxiety of the times is even hidden behind it.

From the Internet era, to the mobile Internet, and then to the industrial Internet, Tencent’s window to open the world seems to have always been on the C-side. Tencent’s C-terminal entry anxiety exists in every era.

Tencent was originally a To B company that provided software development and system integration to telecom operators. In the Internet era, it relied on the rapid development of QQ to gain a firm foothold in the market.

In the era of mobile Internet, Tencent is facing the explosion of Weibo and the huge financial pressure brought about by the significant increase in server costs as the scale of QQ users continues to increase. It was also at this time that the emergence of WeChat solved Tencent’s anxiety on the mobile side.

Facts have proved that Tencent was right to make a big bet on the mobile portal. WeChat has become another national-level application after QQ and has gradually developed into a super platform that integrates many functions such as communication, social networking, information and tools.

In the era of industrial Internet, Tencent bet on AI, but failed to find a better entrance for a long time. Even with the Yuanbao APP, it moves slowly.

Tencent is experienced in ToC products, but ToC products pay more attention to first-mover advantages. However, there is a prerequisite between this. Only when the market is mature enough can card slots be useful.

Previously, Tencent’s non-anxious strategy towards Yuanbao made it less vocal in the AI competition. Faced with friends being exposed to traffic time and time again, how could Tencent, which has the magic weapon of traffic, not be anxious? Through the emergence of DeepSeek, Tencent Yuanbao was lifted and the market saw Tencent’s dominance in the C-end market.

In the past year, the battle for the C-side entrance of the domestic AI model has been in full swing. Tencent Yuanbao seems to have stayed out of the way. Now that traffic is here, what is Tencent going to use it? A large part of the sudden emergence of Yuanbao is to make up for the shortcomings of Tencent’s large model in C-side applications.

Connecting DeepSeek is a manifestation of Tencent’s open ecosystem. The open source nature of DeepSeek-R1 reduces development costs, and Tencent deeply binds it to the WeChat ecosystem through cloud services, forming a unique open source model + private ecosystem business model. Tencent’s traffic portal WeChat uses DeepSeek to deeply integrate AI technology into the WeChat ecosystem, which can expand business boundaries and explore new business growth points.

In addition, as AI is a new sprout, Tencent needs a channel to implement industrial Internet applications. According to the original plan, Tencent Yuanbao APP is like a connector to Tencent’s internal products, connecting all Tencent’s internal ecosystems, including Weixin Official Accounts, Mini programs, as well as enterprise micro-accounts, documents, etc. It is also a channel connecting Tencent’s partners, including partners on Tencent Cloud and many creators.

Tencent Yuanbao and its technical R & D team were originally affiliated with Tencent’s Technology Engineering Business Group (TEG). In January this year, Tencent made organizational adjustments to Yuanbao, and the entire product team moved to the Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Business Group (CSIG). Yuanbao was taken over by Wu Zurong, the person in charge of Tencent Meeting.

The classification of C-end products into CSIG with B-end as the core may be to open up the closed loop of technology research and development and application implementation.

In 2025, Tencent Yuanbao will enter the forefront of the battle for C-side penetration of the large model. But after burning money, can Tencent Yuanbao become Tencent’s next super APP to alleviate the anxiety of C-terminal entrances in the big model era and help Tencent win the ticket for C-terminal entrances in the AI era?