Tencent AI chatbot becomes most downloaded app in China, beats DeepSeek

Tencent

Tencent’s AI chatbot Yuanbao is now the most downloaded free app in China’s iOS App Store. It has replaced DeepSeek, which is now in second place, according to a report by South China Morning Post.

Yuanbao’s rise began in February when Tencent upgraded it with DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model. The chatbot also uses Tencent’s own Hunyuan AI.

A big reason for its success is WeChat, China’s most popular social media app. Last week, Tencent added a download button for Yuanbao in WeChat, making it easy for its 1.3 billion users to access the chatbot.

This move led to a sharp increase in users. By late February, Yuanbao’s daily active users jumped to 3 million, up from a few hundred thousand earlier in the month. Tencent’s stock price also rose 1.6% in Hong Kong after this growth.

Tencent is expanding its AI business to compete with companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and ByteDance. Last week, it launched a new AI model called Hunyuan Turbo S, which it claims is faster than DeepSeek.

Meanwhile, competitors are also advancing. Baidu will launch its Ernie 4.5 AI model and make its chatbot free for all users from April 1. ByteDance is working on new AI research and recently hired an AI expert from Google.