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 Hong Kong shares rose about 1% on Tuesday, outpacing a 0.5% drop in the Hang Seng index.