Tencent Poaches ByteDance Researchers as China AI Race Heats Up

Throughout the past couple of years, as AI fever swept China’s technology sector, one giant—Tencent—seemed to mostly be sitting on the sidelines. The company, which owns the hugely popular WeChat app, didn’t seem enthusiastic to win a fierce race in the country to develop cutting-edge AI models, competing with the likes of DeepSeek, Alibaba and ByteDance.

Now Tencent looks like it may finally be ready to fight the AI battle in earnest.