Tencent has updated its Hunyuan AI model, its first major release since it recruited Yao Shunyu, a leading AI scientist from OpenAI. Tencent’s Hy3 model, currently available in preview, offers improvements in areas from complex reasoning to coding.
The Chinese technology conglomerate is playing catch-up with other Chinese AI developers including ByteDance, Alibaba and DeepSeek. China is betting big on open-source AI to offer alternatives to major US players. Back in 2023, Tencent claimed its then-new Hunyuan LLM was a more powerful and intelligent option than the versions of ChatGPT and Llama available at the time.
Tencent has backed AI start-ups including Moonshot AI and StepFun, hoping that they will boost its cloud computing division. The company has also restructured its research team to improve the quality of training data. It aims to double its investment in AI to more than $5 billion this year.
