<div id="readability-page-1"><div><div>Jiemian News Reporter | Lu KeyanJiemian News Editor | Wen ShuqiOn the afternoon of January 26, Tencent held its 2025 Annual Employee Conference. Tencent Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng shared the company's business summary and strategic thinking over the past year, as well as its plans for 2026. AI was the first topic Ma Huateng addressed. Ma Huateng stated that 2025 will be a big year for AI, and AI is the only business line at Tencent that requires significant investment and is currently the only one worthwhile to invest heavily in. He believes that ChatGPT and DeepSeek have changed the course of AI development, but each company navigates cycles at a different pace. The longevity of its past businesses ensures Tencent's long-term investment in AI. &#34;Every company has different genes and constitutions, and Tencent's style is steady and pragmatic,&#34; Ma Huateng said. He added that Tencent has its own considerations and pace regarding its AI strategy, with the core being the long-term competitiveness of its products and user experience. Currently, Tencent is carefully considering and continuously developing new skills across its various business segments and platforms. Ma Huateng mentioned that in the past year, Tencent has made a series of adjustments to its AI infrastructure and AI talent structure, and in the process, it has also discovered some problems, the core reason of which may lie in insufficient infrastructure. To cope with long-term competition, Tencent has gradually restructured its entire AI R&amp;D team, including bringing in Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI researcher. Ma Huateng stated that Tencent will consider large-scale models and AI products in an integrated manner, and will adopt a cross-functional, decentralized, and co-design approach for product and organizational design in the future. He also made rare comments on the Doubao phone jointly launched by ByteDance and ZTE, as well as the synergy between Alibaba's Qianwen platform and various Alibaba businesses. He mentioned that Tencent has consistently and unequivocally opposed the use of black-market plug-ins to record users' phone and computer screens and upload them to the cloud, as this is &#34;extremely insecure&#34; and &#34;irresponsible.&#34; He also believes that while Alibaba's leveraging of its strengths is commendable, it also has drawbacks—users may not necessarily like the entire suite of services, and not all services within the ecosystem are the best in the industry. Regarding the external attention on the AI-driven intelligence of the WeChat ecosystem, Ma Huateng believes that this should not be rushed. Tencent still needs to carefully consider the underlying logic and plan the intelligent ecosystem of WeChat in a way that balances user needs and privacy security. &#34;We won't control all entry points. Any entrepreneur can create their own entry point within WeChat's intelligent ecosystem and then promote that exclusive entry point. We only provide the underlying connection; this is more scientific.&#34; On January 25th, Tencent's Yuanbao announced it would distribute 1 billion yuan in cash red envelopes during the Spring Festival and quietly launched the internal testing of its AI social function, &#34;Yuanbao Pai.&#34; Ma Huateng stated that Yuanbao hopes to convert the saved marketing expenses into red envelopes shared with users and hopes to replicate the explosive success of WeChat red envelopes during the 2015 Spring Festival. The inspiration for &#34;Yuanbao Pai&#34; comes from Tencent Meeting's group chats, exploring new social gameplay by adding groups to the existing AI assistant—a new attempt based on Tencent's characteristics. Ma Huateng also summarized and reviewed the work of each business unit in 2025. IEG (Interactive and Entertainment Group) once again received high praise from Ma Huateng – &#34;frighteningly strong.&#34; Ma Huateng believes this is due to the team's continuous innovation and learning, introducing new approaches, constantly creating high-quality content, and completing its evolution. Tencent President Martin Lau mentioned that while the global gaming market grew by only 3% last year, Tencent Games grew by 23%, outperforming the market by over 20 percentage points. This was mainly due to the contributions of several long-running titles, including *Honor of Kings*, *Peacekeeper Elite*, *Delta Force*, *Naruto*, *League of Legends*, *CrossFire Mobile*, *Mingchao*, and *Valorant* (both PC and mobile versions). Furthermore, international market business contributed 30% of Tencent Games' revenue last year, exceeding $10 billion. Regarding the significant changes in CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industry Group) last year, Pony Ma stated that the business has more closely integrated AI-related products, including QQ Browser, Tencent Meeting, and Yuanbao. In addition to its consumer-facing (C-end) business, the cloud business achieved overall profitability at scale in 2025, marking a milestone breakthrough. Regarding WXG (WeChat Business Group), Ma Huateng believes that WeChat remains a mainstay of Tencent, and high hopes are placed on it. Businesses such as Video Accounts and WeChat e-commerce have their own growth logic and trajectory. How to leverage new technologies in conjunction with their own characteristics requires more time and patience, and careful planning before action. As for PCG (Platform and Content Business Group), Ma Huateng mentioned that multiple businesses, including QQ, App Store, Tencent News, and Tencent Video, are actively exploring AI integration capabilities and have achieved certain results. However, he also stated that Tencent Video doesn't have &#34;that many&#34; blockbuster products in 2025, which is related to the investment cycle and requires sufficient patience. Tencent Video will face competition from short dramas in 2025; besides continuing to invest in high-quality long-form videos, it will also develop some advertising-driven products. &#34;In the future, people's time will become increasingly precious, so helping users save time and improve efficiency is very important. This is also a point of consideration for how we can integrate AI into our products to help,&#34; Ma Huateng said. Regarding advertising and financial payment businesses, Ma Huateng believes that while Tencent's advertising revenue is growing rapidly with the support of AI, its revenue share is still relatively low compared to the industry average, indicating broad prospects for future commercial development. FiT (Financial Technology) will not pursue speed, continuing to prioritize security.</div></div></div>

At Tencent's 2025 Annual Employee Conference, CEO Ma Huateng emphasized AI as the key investment area for the company, highlighting its strategic importance for 2026. He discussed Tencent's steady approach to AI development, recent adjustments in AI infrastructure, and the restructuring of the AI R&D team. Ma also addressed competition, user privacy, and the integration of AI across Tencent's platforms. He praised the Interactive and Entertainment Group's performance and noted Tencent Games' significant growth, driven by popular titles. The cloud business achieved profitability, and WeChat remains a core focus for future growth.

What did Ma Huateng talk about at his internal employee meeting?