Tencent Holdings Ltd. (TCEHY), China's largest company and the operator of WeChat, is working to rebuild its image as a technology innovator after investors began viewing it as behind in the race to develop frontier AI models. The company has started testing Xiaowei, a native AI agent inside WeChat, its all-in-one platform used by 1.4 billion people, with the goal of eventually helping users complete everyday tasks across an ecosystem that spans millions of apps.
The early version of Xiaowei, which began testing with select users in late June, allows people to type or speak prompts, search online, summarize chats and Moments, draft replies, and trigger mini programs for tasks such as booking flights, taxis, or meals. Tencent developed its own WeLM large language model for the service and also uses DeepSeek's latest model for parts of the product, though the current experience still appears limited, with some transactions taking minutes and often requiring users to step in.
For investors, the bigger question may be whether Xiaowei can turn WeChat's massive user base, payments network, social data, and mini-program ecosystem into a stronger AI advantage. JPMorgan's Alex Yao said the debate over the next six to 12 months is whether WeChat's June beta testing gives investors enough evidence to stop assigning zero value to Tencent's AI roadmap, and he believes it does. If Tencent improves Xiaowei's reliability, investors may view the tool as a way to deepen user engagement and defend its platform against Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), the company behind Qwen and Taobao, and ByteDance Ltd., the operator of Doubao, China's most-used chatbot service.