Tencent Holdings Limited’s Yuanbao AI chatbot passed DeepSeek as the most downloaded AppStore app in China. Yuanbao integrates Hunyuan artificial intelligence technology alongside DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model.
Tencent’s Yuanbao AI chatbot surpassed China’s DeepSeek’s downloads on the Appstore this week. DeepSeek’s launch accelerated competition among tech companies in the artificial intelligence industry.
Yuanbao surpasses DeepSeek as China’s most downloaded free app on AppStore
Tencent integrated DeepSeek R1 into its products, including WeChat’s search feature and Peacekeeper Elite game. Tencent’s WeChat platform has over 1 billion users, which may have increased the popularity of its AI bot, Yuanbao. The company is also recognized as the world’s biggest games distributor, with some titles such as League of Legends and PUBG Mobile.
Tencent’s yuan bao app has risen to the top of the free app download rankings on China’s Apple App Store, surpassing DeepSeek.#Tencent #Apps #China pic.twitter.com/dGBpOaPdxD
— Wind Info (@WindInfoUS) March 3, 2025
Qimai Data revealed that Yuanbao had surpassed Byte Dance’s Doubao amid its advertising campaign for its flagship AI offering. The company also revealed that three of China’s top five most downloaded free apps are AI chatbots: Tencet Yuanbao, ByteDance’s Doubao, and DeepSeek. Tencent revealed its AI chatbot incorporated its own Hunyuan artificial intelligence technology with DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model.
Tencent recently launched Hunyuan Turbo S, a new AI model it claims answers queries faster than DeepSeek’s R1. The company revealed that when the model was tested in fields like knowledge, math, and reasoning, its capabilities matched DeepSeek’s V3.
The company also revealed that Turbo S was cheaper in deployment costs than its previous iterations. The DeepSeek R1 release last month increased interest in China’s AI industry. The new AI model matched rival offerings such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, using older hardware and less deployment costs. The AI model’s launch sent shockwaves across global markets that saw Nvidia Corp lose $600 billion in value in a day.
China’s tech companies launch their AI models amid rising interest
Other Chinese companies rushed to release their models shortly after to capitalize on the increasing interest in the technology. In February, Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent released versions of their AI models.
Alibaba launched the Qwen 2.5-Max model and claimed it could outperform other models from DeepSeek and Meta Platforms. Shortly after the release, the Chinese company’s U.S.-listed shares rose by 3%, while Nvidia’s shares recorded a 5% decline.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited also pledged $53 billion (380 billion yuan) to AI infrastructure, such as data centers, over the next three years. The company revealed it aimed to become a key partner to companies developing and applying AI to the real world as models evolved.
Citigroup analyst Alicia Yap commented that the amount set a record for the largest investment by Chinese private enterprises in constructing AI hardware infrastructure.
Baidu also announced it planned to release the next generation of its artificial intelligence model in the second quarter of 2025. The company called its technology a foundational model set to have multimodal capabilities.
Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li, expressed his excitement over the technology, saying that the inference costs of foundational models could be reduced by over 90% in twelve months. He added that if costs were reduced by a certain percentage, it would also lead to increased productivity at the same rate.
DeepSeek, however, faced challenges after its launch, such as a recent ban in Australia. The Australian government cited national security risks that compelled DeepSeek’s removal from all federal networks except corporate organizations such as Australia Post and ABC.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke commented that the ban was not aimed at any country but at risks to national security. He added that AI offered immense potential, but when risks arose, governments would act decisively to protect their government’s assets. Science Minister Ed Husic also raised concerns over DeepSeek’s handling of user data. He said the platform’s data management practices were still unclear.
The US Defence Department officially blacklisted Tencent for alleged military affiliations in January. The announcement led to a 7.3% plummet in Tencent’s stock price to $49.31 within hours.
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