Tencent hat die Hälfte der KI-Welt aufgekauft

Tencent will once again flex its "money power". This time, the target is very likely Manus.

Recently, multiple media outlets reported that, according to insiders, the once-famous general agent platform Manus has turned a corner: several companies and institutions that participated in Manus' early-stage investments plan to spend $2 billion to buy back the company from Meta.

Those involved in the rumors include well-known domestic investment institutions such as Sequoia China and ZhenFund, and Tencent is also on the list.

Zimubang reached out to Sequoia China, Tencent, etc. for verification but did not receive a valid response.

If the rumor eventually comes true, Manus, this ill-fated star company, may become another key player in the gradually taking shape "New Tencent Ecosystem".

In the past few years, Tencent has been actively making moves in the secondary market, investing in a large number of AI companies. In many of the invested projects, Tencent is one of the largest shareholders.

In the fields of AI chips and underlying computing power, Tencent has successively invested in companies such as Enflame Technology, Lightelligence, Yunbao Intelligence, Wuwenxinqiong, and Jiyiwei Semiconductor; its shareholding ratio in Enflame Technology and Yunbao Intelligence is close to 20%, making it the largest shareholder.

In the field of large models, Tencent's investment targets cover five of the "Six AI Dragons": Zhipu AI, MiniMax, Dark Side of the Moon, Baichuan Intelligence, and Jieyue Xingchen. At the same time, it also spent about 10 billion yuan to participate in the first-round financing of DeepSeek.

In the field of AI applications, Tencent has also been making intensive investments and started earlier. Since 2019, it has invested in companies such as Minglue Technology, Fanwei, and Fanshi Intelligence, covering mainstream tracks such as AI marketing, AI collaborative office, and AI enterprise platforms.

The latest exposed Tencent AI investment project is Yanyu Technology, the parent company of the well-known AI creation platform Liblib.

On June 18, Yanyu Technology announced the completion of a $300 million Series B+ financing, jointly led by Tencent, Shunwei Capital, and Granite Asia, with a valuation of over $2 billion.

As one AI star company after another joins Tencent's fold, Tencent has almost "bought" half of China's AI industry.

The strength and scale of these companies vary greatly. There is Zhipu, which is stirring up waves in the large model track and whose market value has just exceeded HK$1 trillion, and there are also many fledgling startups whose product technologies are yet to be tested by the market.

The key reason why they can catch Tencent's eye is that they can help this giant quickly "make up for its deficiencies". In the fields of chips, computing power, models, and applications, if Tencent were to work in isolation, it would be difficult to achieve ideal results; by introducing external assistance, it can quickly make up for its weaknesses and achieve a much-needed overtaking on a curve.

The strategy of quickly forming competitiveness and building camp barriers with "money power" has been proven successful by Tencent in the mobile Internet era. Now, it is trying to replicate the same story in the AI era.

1

Tencent has been planning its layout in the AI field for a long time. In the past half a year or so, as some of the invested companies have successively gone public, Tencent's long-term investments have begun to enter the financial return period.

In November last year, Minglue Technology, in which Tencent participated in multiple rounds of investments and holds about 27% of the shares, went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Its market value exceeded HK$40 billion on the first day and has now fallen back to around HK$35 billion. Based on this calculation, the value of Tencent's shares is about HK$9.5 billion.

Half a year later, another company in which Tencent holds shares and has a higher "AI content", Lightelligence, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Lightelligence focuses on the field of optoelectronic hybrid computing power and is known as the "world's first AI silicon photonics chip stock". Since April, its stock price has once reached HK$1,050 but then dropped to around HK$500, with a market value of about HK$48.5 billion.

According to Lightelligence's prospectus, Tencent holds 4.19% of the shares. Based on the current market value, the value of Tencent's shares is about HK$2 billion.

Although these two companies are supported by the AI concept, they are in relatively niche tracks; the two large model star stocks are the "main courses" of Tencent's capital feast.

In early January this year, Zhipu and MiniMax were successively listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and their stock prices soared like rockets afterwards.

As of the close of the Hong Kong stock market on June 22, Zhipu has risen nearly 20 times in total, with a market value of up to HK$1.07 trillion. MiniMax has experienced a significant correction but still has a cumulative increase of 274%, with a market value approaching HK$200 billion.

Tencent invested in Zhipu during its Series B4 financing, spending 200 million yuan to obtain about 2% of the shares. Now, the book value of this investment exceeds HK$20 billion, a full 100-fold increase.

On the other hand, Tencent invested about $50 million in MiniMax around 2023, equivalent to about 340 million yuan, holding 2.58% of the shares. Based on MiniMax's current market value, the value of Tencent's shares is HK$5 billion, an increase of about 14 times.

Since the end of the mobile Internet era, it has become increasingly difficult for domestic CVCs, and the return on investment has plummeted. However, Zhipu and MiniMax have become rare classic cases for Tencent's current investments with their amazing increases.

A domestic AI chip company that Tencent has invested in is expected to go public soon.

On June 15, Enflame Technology's IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board was approved by the listing committee of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. According to Caixin's report, Tencent has invested in Enflame Technology five times, with a cumulative investment of 5.14 billion yuan. Compared with the one or two percentage points of shareholding in Zhipu and MiniMax, Tencent and its concerted actors hold as much as 20% of the shares in Enflame Technology, ranking first.

Enflame Technology is known as one of the "Four Domestic GPU Dragons". The other three, Moore Threads, Muxi Co., Ltd., and Biren Technology, have all gone public, with market values ranging from HK$150 billion to HK$300 billion. If Enflame Technology reaches the same level, the value of Tencent's shares could reach HK$30 billion to HK$60 billion.

What is even more anticipated, of course, is Manus and DeepSeek.

Tencent invested in Manus early on. Meta, which entered the game in a hurry and left in a hurry, raised its valuation to $2 billion, which is also the rumored buyback price.

According to the latest news, Manus is considering adjusting its corporate structure and setting up a Sino-foreign joint venture registered in the country. Foreign media analysts believe that this joint venture structure is to allow Chinese investors to continue to hold the company's equity in a compliant manner and is also preparing for a future IPO in Hong Kong.

If it goes public in Hong Kong in the future, Manus' biggest selling points will be its team itself and its rapid growth rate. There are reports that Manus has increased its annual recurring revenue from $100 million to $400 million - $500 million in just a few months, which is not inferior to companies like Zhipu.

As for DeepSeek, Tencent squeezed into the first-round financing in early June, investing 10 billion yuan and becoming one of the largest external investors. Compared with its investments in companies like Zhipu, Tencent has increased its investment scale by two orders of magnitude.

Currently, DeepSeek's valuation has reached about 340 billion yuan, and Tencent's shareholding ratio is about 3%. Referring to the stock price trends of similar companies and considering the preference of the global market, DeepSeek has every chance to reach a market value of one trillion yuan; by then, the value of Tencent's shares is expected to exceed 30 billion yuan.

2

However, Tencent has never been satisfied with just being a financial investor. It always hopes to kill two birds with one stone, obtaining financial returns while getting business and strategic assistance.

Quickly making up for the shortcomings of its own AI business by investing in other companies is the biggest common feature of Tencent's AI investments.

Take AI chips as an example. As early as the end of 2021, Tencent launched three products - the AI inference chip "Zixiao", the video transcoding chip "Canghai", and the intelligent network card chip "Xuanling".

Among them, the Zixiao chip is widely used within Tencent and has a high cost-performance ratio in scenarios such as OCR text recognition, intelligent meetings, and image and voice noise reduction.

However, the Zixiao chip can only be used for AI inference and is difficult to compare with NVIDIA GPUs. It also lags behind domestic training and inference integrated chips such as Huawei Ascend and Baidu Kunlun. Tencent still needs to purchase a large amount of GPUs externally to meet the computing power needs of its AI business.

On the other hand, Tencent is not certain about the huge project of self-developed chips.

In an open dialogue in early June, Tang Daosheng, CEO of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Group, said when talking about self-developed chips that "designing chips by oneself does not solve the problem of production capacity". Tencent chooses to cooperate with more chip manufacturers and integrate with the ecosystem, making the manufacturers willing to use Tencent as a benchmark for computing power display.

Enflame Technology is one of Tencent's main allies in the field of AI chips.

The two companies started to cooperate in 2019. According to Guancha.cn, Enflame Technology's first-generation training chip, Suisi 1.0, was tested and launched within Tencent Cloud, and Tencent's Zixiao chip was also the result of cooperation with Enflame Technology.

At the same time, Tencent is the main customer of Enflame Technology, contributing more than 80% of Enflame Technology's sales in 2025.

Enflame Technology is making efforts in the training and inference integrated chip module, which has been taped out but has not been mass-produced and delivered yet. Compared with the Zixiao chip, which can only do inference, perhaps this is the heavyweight product that Tencent values more and hopes to purchase in large quantities.

However, Tencent has not placed all its hopes on AI chips in one company.

In addition to investing in Enflame Technology, Tencent has also successively invested in companies such as Yunbao Intelligence, Lightelligence, Jiyimei Semiconductor, and Wuwenxinqiong, which are distributed in the subdivided fields of DPU (Data Processor), photonic chips, digital-analog hybrid chips, and the IDC intermediate layer. Some are trying to open up new technology paths outside of GPUs and TPUs, some specialize in hardware around AI computing power, and some are conducting technological explorations for the future.

The basic large model is also a key area where Tencent is "calling for reinforcements".

Tencent's self-developed Hunyuan large model did not meet expectations before; the Hy3 Preview led by Yao Shunyu has improved significantly but is still in the stage of iterative upgrading. Fortunately, Tencent has successively invested in the "Five Dragons", indirectly occupying a place in the field of SOTA models.

After becoming a shareholder of the "Five Dragons", Tencent has removed potential obstacles in terms of the base model for intelligent agent frameworks such as QClaw, Workbuddy, and Codebuddy in advance - the sudden "supply cut" by Anthropic has revealed such risks.

At the same time, this move has bought more time and space for Tencent's own base model R & D. Hy3 Preview has not forcibly pursued SOTA and ranking, and has not been fully promoted by Tencent. This has something to do with the group's various businesses being able to choose third-party models.

However, Tencent values DeepSeek more. It has not only invested 10 billion yuan but also made DeepSeek one of the only two optional base models for Yuanbao, standing side by side with Hunyuan. Compared with the "Five Dragons" that are busy pursuing PMF, DeepSeek, which focuses on AGI, is more in line with Tencent's long-term interests.

As for AI applications, Tencent has made relatively few investments.

Liblib is one of the invested companies. It is a startup focusing on AI image and video creation, claiming to have over 30 million cumulative users, generating over 5 million images per day on average, and having an annual recurring revenue close to $300 million. In addition, when Manus set off a general agent craze, Tencent also invested in it and bet on its competitor Genspark.

Overall, Tencent's investment interest in AI applications is far less than that in AI chips and base models.

After all, WeChat Agent is on the verge of launch, and the Agent application ecosystem with WeChat as the entrance and mini-programs as the landing point is Tencent's development focus. Although AI services such as Liblib and Manus have their outstanding features, their importance and strategic value cannot be compared with the Agent-enabled WeChat.

Ma Huateng once described the challenges faced by Tencent's AI as a "leaky boat". At that time, he did not elaborate on how to plug the leaks; but both insisting on self-development and "making up for deficiencies" in business through investment are obviously Tencent's long-standing coping strategies.

3

A few years ago, Tencent dismantled the "Tencent Ecosystem" through a series of equity clearances. Now, through a series of equity actions, Tencent has become a shareholder of a large number of AI companies, and the "New Tencent Ecosystem" in the AI era is on the verge of emerging.

AI star enterprises such as Zhipu and MiniMax, and domestic chip companies such as Enflame Technology and Yunbao Intelligence all have Tencent's shadow behind them. Even when Manus was in trouble, Tencent was included in the rumored "problem solvers".

At the same time, AI entrepreneurs have also flocked to the "New Tencent Ecosystem", including many star players.

Wang Huiwen, a veteran of Meituan, founded Guangnianzhiwai, and Tencent invested $50 million. This is understandable: Meituan was originally a key player in the old Tencent Ecosystem.

But some entrepreneurs from Alibaba and ByteDance also choose to get money from Tencent.

After leaving Alibaba, Lin Junyang founded his own AI laboratory. In the budding state when the product direction had not been announced, he received $20 million from Tencent in the first-round financing. The other two "financial backers" were Gao Rong and Sequoia, and his former employer Alibaba was not among them.

Chen Mian, the founder of Liblib, previously served as the global commercialization director of Jianying under ByteDance. After leaving, he started a business. He received an investment from Mingshi Capital in the Series A financing, and money from Sequoia, CMC, and Ant Group in the Series B financing. Recently, he introduced Tencent as a new shareholder in the Series B+ financing.

Yanchuangwanwu specializes in AI intelligent agent programming. The two founders have respectively served as the algorithm director of TikTok and the technology product director of Baidu. It completed the Pre-A round of financing at the end of 2025, and Tencent invested tens of millions of dollars.

One of the reasons why founders with Alibaba or ByteDance backgrounds take money from Tencent at the beginning instead of seeking support from their former employers may be that Tencent offers more favorable investment terms than Alibaba and ByteDance.

Tencent has always been the most proficient in investment among the BAT giants, and even in the new BAT. This tradition dates back to the mobile Internet era, and now Tencent is trying to bring it to the AI era.

But after the "old Tencent Ecosystem" fell apart, why does Tencent want to form a "New Tencent Ecosystem"?

Revitalizing the 400 - 500 billion yuan in cash on hand and finding a proper outlet for the money is the basic motivation for Tencent to invest. At the same time,