Tencent's Yuanbao AI Chatbot Surpasses DeepSeek as China's Top iPhone App

Tencent's AI Bot Passes DeepSeek as China's Favorite on iPhones

Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s Yuanbao AI chatbot passed DeepSeek to become the most downloaded iPhone app in China this week, highlighting the intensifying domestic competition. Tencent's app integrates its in-house Hunyuan artificial intelligence tech alongside DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model and has taken over at a time of acute interest and competition around AI in the country. Three of the top five most downloaded free apps are AI bots, with ByteDance Ltd.'s Doubao joining Tencent and DeepSeek.

Tencent AI assistant Yuanbao tops DeepSeek in Apple App Store in China By Investing.com

Investing.com-- Tencent's artificial intelligence assistant Yuanbao on Tuesday surpassed DeepSeek in downloads in Apple's App Store in China, while also becoming the most downloaded free app on the store. Yuanbao was also seen surpassing Bytedance's Doubao AI app in downloads last week, as Tencent Holdings Ltd (HK:0700) embarked on an aggressive advertising campaign for its flagship AI offering, data from aggregator Qimai Data showed. Yuanbao is linked to Tencent's WeChat, which is China's biggest messaging and social media app. Interest in China's AI capabilities perked up over the past month after the release of DeepSeek R1, which appeared to match rival offerings such as OpenAI's ChatGPT while using older hardware and a fraction of its budget. The model saw several other Chinese internet majors rushing to release their own offerings to capitalize on increasing interest. Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), and Tencent had released new versions of their flagship AI models over the past month. DeepSeek's release also showed that Chinese AI developers remained competitive despite a lack of access to advanced U.S.-made AI chips, with a growing focus on efficiency over scaling among Chinese developers.

Tencent's AI Bot Passes DeepSeek as China's Favorite on iPhones

Questions persist about how firms will eventually monetize such services Tencent Holdings's Yuanbao AI chatbot passed DeepSeek to become the most downloaded iPhone app in China this week, highlighting the intensifying domestic competition. Tencent's app integrates its in-house Hunyuan artificial intelligence tech alongside DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model and has taken over at a time of acute interest and competition around AI in the country. Three of the top five most downloaded free apps are AI bots, with ByteDance's Doubao joining Tencent and DeepSeek. Now a month into its sensational rise, DeepSeek's chatbot has galvanized China's tech and internet ecosystem, accelerating investment and new product releases. Alibaba Group Holding has started benchmarking itself against DeepSeek and announced a $53 billion (roughly Rs. 4,63,090 crore) investment in AI. Tencent, for its part, has integrated DeepSeek R1 into a slew of its products, including WeChat's search feature as well as powering a virtual companion in its evergreen game Peacekeeper Elite. Last week, Tencent also launched a Hunyuan Turbo edition that it says is faster than DeepSeek in delivering answers. Shenzhen-based Tencent is the world's biggest games distributor and its WeChat platform is used by more than 1.4 billion people. That may have helped it secure the top spot, as the company looks to ramp up its presence in the race for AI users. Questions persist about how companies will eventually monetize such services, which are presently free to use and increasingly released in open source form for other developers to take advantage of, as DeepSeek does with its AI models. For now, the focus remains on getting the most users on board and Tencent has stolen a march on rivals like Alibaba and Baidu, which have made bigger bets on AI than the Shenzhen company. © 2025 Bloomberg LP

DeepSeek Loses Top Spot As Tencent's Yuanbao AI Becomes The Top iPhone App In China Amid Intensifying AI Battle - Alibaba Gr Hldgs (NYSE:BABA), Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU)

Tencent Holdings' TCEHY Yuanbao AI chatbot has surpassed DeepSeek as the most downloaded iPhone app in China. What Happened: Tencent integrated its in-house Hunyuan AI technology with DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model, boosting the chatbot's appeal and helping it claim the No. 1 spot on China's iPhone app rankings this week, according to a report by Bloomberg. DeepSeek had dominated downloads for over a month. Three of the top five free apps in China are now AI-powered chatbots, with ByteDance's Doubao also ranking among them. See Also: 'Fire The Intel Board,' Says Former CEO Craig Barrett As He Pushes Back On Breakup Plans, Urges Focus On Chipmaking Wins In January, DeepSeek shook the U.S. stock market. Nvidia Corp. NVDA lost $600 billion in value in a single day. According to the Chinese startup, its chatbot can compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, which it developed at a fraction of the cost. In response to DeepSeek's rise, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA has begun benchmarking against it and announced a $53 billion AI investment. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Why It's Important: China's leading tech giants -- Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu Inc. BIDU -- are in a fierce race to capture the growing AI market. While monetization strategies remain unclear, companies are focused on mass adoption and open-source AI development. With its 1.4 billion WeChat users, Tencent has an advantage in distributing AI-powered services, but Alibaba and Baidu are making larger AI investments. Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has spoken about the need for significantly more computational power for next-generation AI models. Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: MrBeast Lost Millions On Amazon's 'Beast Games' -- Now He's Looking To Raise Hundreds Of Millions To Take His Brand To The Next Level Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Shutterstock BABAAlibaba Group Holding Ltd$130.10-1.82%OverviewBIDUBaidu Inc$84.26-2.53%NVDANVIDIA Corp$113.93-8.80%TCEHYTencent Holdings Ltd$61.08-0.86%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs