Tencent AI Assistant "Yuanbao" team is adjusted to CSIG, led by the person in charge of Tencent Meeting. | Zhiyong Exclusive

Author | Deng Yongyi 

Editor | Su Jianxun

"Intelligent Emergence" has learned that recently, Tencent's AI assistant application "Yuanbao" has undergone an organizational adjustment. The entire product team has been integrated into CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industries Group).

After the adjustment, the "Yuanbao" application will be under the responsibility of Wu Zurong, the person in charge of Tencent Meeting. He will mainly be responsible for the product capability building and experience optimization of Yuanbao. The Tencent Hunyuan large model R & D team will continue to focus on improving the model's capabilities and performance, providing technical support for "Yuanbao".

Wu Zurong is one of the key figures in the incubation of Tencent Meeting from scratch. Since its launch in 2020, Tencent Meeting now has over 300 million users and is a phenomenal product in the enterprise service market.

"Intelligent Emergence" understands that recently, Tang Daosheng, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent Group and CEO of the Cloud and Smart Industries Group, stated at an employee communication meeting that Tencent is firmly investing in AI strategic directions such as large models. In the future, while actively promoting technological innovation, it will also increase the application and exploration at the product and scenario levels.

"Intelligent Emergence" has sought verification from Tencent regarding the above information. As of the time of publication, no response has been received.

Yuanbao App Source: Yuanbao

Tencent Yuanbao is an AI assistant application launched by Tencent based on the capabilities of the Hunyuan large model. It officially went live on May 30, 2024. Its form is an AI question-answering assistant similar to ChatGPT. Users can complete tasks such as AI search, AI reading, AI writing, AI drawing, and more on it.

The Hunyuan large model is a company-level project of Tencent. "Intelligent Emergence" has learned that the application team of Tencent Yuanbao and the Hunyuan technology R & D originally belonged to Tencent TEG (Technology Engineering Group).

Now adjusting Yuanbao to CSIG also means that the product and the basic model are starting to separate, which has become the mainstream trend.

From 2023 to 2024, the main goal of domestic large companies and large model startups has been focused on building the base large model capabilities.

At that time, AI assistant applications, as an important window for verifying model capabilities and obtaining user and market feedback, had a mutually nurturing relationship with the models. Their related teams were usually placed under the same business, which also helped the rapid iteration of model capabilities.

"Intelligent Emergence" has also recently reported a similar adjustment: In December, Alibaba's AI application "Tongyi" was spun off from Alibaba Cloud and merged into Alibaba's Intelligent Information Business Group. Under this business group, there is also the intelligent search product "Quark" for the To C market.

Bytedance also has a similar layout. Its large model business is divided into multiple departments such as Seed, Flow, and Stone, which are respectively responsible for large model R & D, product application, and technical support; while Baidu's Wen Xiaoyan APP and Wenxin large model belong to two different business groups, the Technology Middle Platform Business Group (TPG) and the Mobile Ecosystem Business Group (MEG).

The current adjustment also means that "Yuanbao" has completed the initial technical incubation and entered the next stage of product development.

Since the rise of the large model wave, the ChatBot -like AI assistant applications have always been regarded as the software "entry" of the AI 2.0 era. Whether it is a large company or a startup, such products have become a standard configuration.

Compared with the aggressive new user acquisition and investment-driven ByteDance Doubao and Kimi, Tencent's "Yuanbao" currently relies more on natural growth, but there has been an acceleration recently. According to the data of the AI Product List, from October to December 2024, the monthly active user growth rate of the Yuanbao App remained at around 30% - 40%.

According to DataEye data, the current investment in "Yuanbao" is not much. The advertising materials that have been launched are concentrated in Tencent's own ecosystem, such as Kugou Music, QQ Reading, QQ Music, as well as channels such as Bilibili and TV dramas, for conversion through marketing cooperation.

The AI character interaction cooperation between Tencent Yuanbao and Tencent Video Source: Tencent Yuanbao

Tencent's large model applications are also more likely to be implemented in internal business scenarios first. Currently, the Hunyuan large model has been integrated into more than 700 Tencent businesses and scenarios. On the To B side, the capabilities of the Hunyuan large model are output to enterprise customers by CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industries Group).

In the eyes of the outside world, Tencent's AI layout appears to be unhurried, but in the opinion of many industry insiders, Tencent is an AI force that cannot be ignored.

Previously, many large model practitioners told "Intelligent Emergence" that Hunyuan is in the first echelon in the performance of long text and AI summary scenarios in China. This is also because Tencent has accumulated high-quality data in social scenarios for many years, such as the WeChat Official Account ecosystem.

As large companies are adjusting the organizational positioning of AI applications one after another, it is not difficult to see that the importance of AI business is further increasing. It can be predicted that the AI application market in 2025 will usher in more intense competition.