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Tencenti

Headquartered in Shenzhen, Tencent is one of China's and the world's largest internet services companies, with interests in media, entertainment, web and mobile communications, advertising, e-commerce and internet banking.

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  • Chinese entrepreneurs have become frequent subjects of speculation and verbal abuse on domestic social media
  • Regulators have stepped up scrutiny of online attacks targeting entrepreneurs, as Beijing looks to restore private-sector confidence

Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang grew his wealth by 71 per cent to become the richest Chinese tech entrepreneur, aided by a rally in its US-listed shares.

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Comments made by top executives this earnings season have offered a glimpse into the progress made by China’s Big Tech firms, after US start-up OpenAI launched in late 2022 its groundbreaking ChatGPT.

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The first two months of 2024 were lucrative for the southern tech hub even as some of its biggest private players and industry champions remain under sanctions imposed by Washington.

Follow-Your-Click, developed with researchers from universities in Hong Kong and Beijing, turns images and simple text prompts into short video clips amid Sora hype.

Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay are enhancing operations to make it easier for foreign travellers to pay for goods and services on the mainland, the world’s largest cashless society.

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GSR Ventures’ Allen Zhu sees the current investor interest generated by artificial intelligence start-ups that are building large language models as based on a ‘fear of missing out’.

AMD had hoped to get Washington’s approval to sell to Chinese customers its MI309 processor, which performs at a lower level than what the company sells globally.

The MiniMax deal would mark Alibaba’s second major artificial intelligence start-up investment this year after leading Moonshot AI’s US$1 billion funding round in February.

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Proposals like the one submitted by Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan signal that policymakers are actively discussing how to boost the platform economy, analysts say.

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From top-level meetings to AI discussions and a shock investment discovery by the House, here are a few highlights from the SCMP’s US-based correspondents in February 2024.

The initiative seeks to ‘lower the threshold of cloud services for more enterprises and developers’ in mainland China, where artificial intelligence development projects are driving demand.

The increased interest in bitcoin reflects how a community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts on the mainland continues to thrive, despite a sweeping government ban.

China grants licences to more than 100 new domestic titles, giving the industry another confidence boost after a video-game-related stock rout in December.

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An engineer who worked on Google’s VideoPoet video generation technology has joined TikTok owner ByteDance, as Big Tech companies race to advance generative AI tools.

The introduction of Sora has forced China’s AI industry to again grapple with how it will catch up to the latest tech in the face of escalating US sanctions.

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Tuhu Car, a Chinese car maintenance and repair company listed in Hong Kong, said it expects its financial results for 2023 to reflect a turnaround in its business as a post-pandemic rebound in domestic travel boosted demand for its services.

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Tencent and ByteDance each had two apps in the top five, with four of the five being more than a decade old, according to MIIT report on Lunar New Year period usage.

Tencent is working with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to use digital technology to renew traditional Chinese opera, starting with the story of legendary heroine Hua Mulan.

IDG is one of the oldest venture firms in the market and has been in China since 1993, having invested in more than 1,600 companies, with 500 of them going public or getting acquired.

Douyu and Huya say they have no plans to merge after a failed attempt in 2020, but they are collaborating as Tencent prepares to allow its top games back on rival platform Douyin.