Tencent Adjusts its Large Model Team Structure, with Former OpenAI Researcher YAO Shunyu Taking on a Key Position | Exclusive from 36Kr

Intelligence Emergence exclusively learned that Tencent recently completed an organizational adjustment, officially establishing the AI Infra Department, AI Data Department, and Data Computing Platform Department.

In an internal announcement released on the afternoon of December 17th, Tencent stated that Vinces Yao will serve as the Chief AI Scientist in the "CEO/President's Office" and report to Tencent President Liu Chiping. He will also concurrently serve as the head of the AI Infra Department and the Large Language Model Department, reporting to Lu Shan, the President of the Technology and Engineering Group.

Tencent did not disclose Vinces Yao's Chinese name or past resume. However, Intelligence Emergence learned that Vinces Yao is Yao Shunyu, who joined Tencent a few months ago. He graduated from Tsinghua University and Princeton University, and was formerly a researcher at OpenAI. He was a core contributor to OpenAI's first - generation agent products, Operator and Deep Research.

This adjustment is also a significant step in Tencent's intensive AI layout this year.

Previously, although the Hunyuan Large Model team was a company - level project at Tencent, integrating different sectors across various BGs, within TEG alone, departments such as the Large Pre - language Model Department, AI Lab, and Machine Learning Platform were involved in the research and development of the Hunyuan model. After the adjustment, the internal forces of the model team will be more unified.

The newly established AI Data Department and Data Computing Platform Department will be responsible for the construction of large - model data and evaluation systems, and the construction of a data - intelligent integration platform for big data and machine learning, respectively.

Among them, Wang Di will continue to serve as the deputy general manager of the Large Language Model Department, reporting to Vinces Yao (Yao Shunyu). Liu Yuhong will serve as the head of the AI Data Department, and Chen Peng will serve as the head of the Data Computing Platform Department, both reporting to Jiang Jie, the company's vice - president.

In 2024, ByteDance was the most generous player in the large - model recruitment market, but this year, Tencent has joined the list.

According to a recent report by The Information, Tencent is poaching ByteDance's AI teams at high prices. In the past few months, it has actively recruited top AI talents from ByteDance with double the salary.

What Intelligence Emergence and people close to Tencent learned is that Tencent's campus recruitment this year has spared no expense. For the talents it fancies, offering a 50% higher salary is the baseline, and it can offer up to twice the salary to recruit people.

The movement of top talents often reflects a company's urgency regarding a matter. Tencent is not only targeting fresh graduates but also aiming at top large - model talents globally.

Intelligence Emergence learned that since joining Tencent, Yao Shunyu, who now leads the AI Infra Department and the Large Language Model Department, has helped Hunyuan recruit more talents, such as several core employees from ByteDance, Alibaba, and the "Six AI Tigers" (Kimi, MiniMax, Zhipu, Jieyue Xingchen, Baichuan, Lingyi Wanwu).

In addition to establishing a new model team, Tencent has integrated its original internal teams and significantly adjusted the goals and organizational mechanisms of model training.

The results soon became apparent. On December 5th, Tencent released a new large model, HY 2.0, which significantly improved the pre - training data and reinforcement learning strategies, showing considerable progress in both inference and efficiency. Throughout 2025, the Hunyuan team released more than 30 new models, and its 3D models have reached the global leading level.

Source: Tencent

Back to the Main Arena

Actively poaching talents and reorganizing the model team, behind which Tencent is making unprecedented efforts to return to its main AI arena: AI assistant - type products centered on dialogue.

To make AI assistant - type products well, a model is essential. Model ability remains the most crucial competitive factor today. However, for a long time in the past, Tencent's presence was not very prominent on the highly competitive large - model stage.

"Tencent has always been a very pragmatic company, which is related to its business." A person close to Tencent analyzed to Intelligence Emergence. Whether it's WeChat, games, or social media, Tencent has always been engaged in the most popular businesses. Since its establishment, Tencent's attitude towards new technological revolutions has been similar. It waits for the technological revolution to mature and then applies it on a large scale to existing products.

In terms of interaction form, WeChat is the product most similar to ChatGPT, which gives Tencent sufficient confidence to cope with changes in the AI market, until DeepSeek was released in early 2025.

36Kr learned that at least before the popularity of DeepSeek R1, Tencent had clearly felt a sense of urgency since Q3 2024. A person familiar with the matter said that at that time, the entire Yuanbao team was shrouded in anxiety, and even after various promotion methods were used, there was no sign of growth.

An important external factor is that the daily active users of Doubao, a product under ByteDance, have approached 10 million. Within Tencent, this is considered an important dividing line, meaning that the product has initially established a foothold and can achieve natural growth without relying on promotion.

This directly led to a series of subsequent actions by Tencent: it must firmly increase investment in the direction of AI assistant - type applications. "We must fight this battle in a product - oriented and commercialized way." Tang Daosheng once said in a public interview.

After that, Tencent completed an important adjustment in early 2025, moving Yuanbao from TEG to CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industry Group), and putting it under the leadership of Wu Zurong (Lori Wu), the person in charge of Tencent Meeting. He is one of the few product experts in Tencent's CSIG system who has developed C - end products, launched them from scratch, and achieved large - scale growth.

Fortunately, shortly after the adjustment, Tencent encountered the open - source DeepSeek, and Yuanbao achieved its first wave of growth. From early 2025 to March, Yuanbao's monthly active users exceeded 40 million in one month, once surpassing Doubao on the Apple free download list and ranking first.

However, the impact of DeepSeek is two - sided. On the one hand, Yuanbao's rapid growth proves users' eagerness for high - quality model capabilities. On the other hand, this growth mainly relying on open - source models also made Tencent's senior management aware of the constraints.

Image Source: Yicai Business School

In mid - 2025, Yuanbao's high - speed growth did not continue and once slowed down. After the basic model ability was significantly improved, Yuanbao App's performance also improved significantly.

Tencent has a business model that is difficult to replicate globally, and the outside world often says that Tencent has a deep moat. For Tencent at present, after DeepSeek, whether it's adjusting the organization or poaching talents, it all points to the same goal - it must have self - developed model capabilities that do not hold it back.

The Next Competition Point: Agent

In the Chinese large - model market, from 2023 to the present, the main track of AI applications has actually still revolved around the Chatbot (conversational assistant) entry.

Tencent's Senior Executive Vice - President Tang Daosheng also admitted: "In the past two years, the product form in this track has not changed much, and dialogue remains the core." The entire industry has verified an iron law - model ability determines the product's upper limit.

The competition is escalating, and Agent is becoming the next competition point. The best evidence of this is the recent launch of the Doubao mobile phone by ByteDance, which has pushed this arena to a new stage.

Alibaba is another example. In September 2024, after seeing the capabilities of the Qwen 3 Max version, Alibaba's senior management decided to launch a new C - end application brand, "Qianwen," with the full strength of the group, instead of Quark, which was previously the main focus.

The same is true for ByteDance's Doubao. After recruiting model leader Wu Yonghui, the flagship models such as Doubao 1.6 Pro have significantly improved capabilities and are now in the first echelon of domestic models. This has also enabled the Doubao App to keep up in the highly competitive AI assistant market in 2025.

Although Tencent holds the trump card of WeChat, the challenges it faces are far more than just catching up in terms of technology.

For ByteDance, which does not have a social entry, there are no burdens in making mobile phones. It can cooperate with smaller - scale manufacturers, design new functions in an AI Native way, and bypass many restrictions from the bottom without considering the original product form.

For Tencent, how to embed AI capabilities into national - level applications without damaging the original product experience and in line with privacy and compliance requirements requires more considerations and will face greater resistance.

At the Q3 2025 earnings conference call, Tencent President Liu Chiping clearly stated that "WeChat will eventually launch an Agent." But he also reminded the outside world: "At present, the AI market is actually still in a very early stage of development."