Tencent executive says computing shortage has slowed Hunyuan AI development

Tencent Senior Executive Vice President and CEO of the Cloud and Smart Industries Group Tang Daosheng has publicly answered criticism that the company has moved too slowly in artificial intelligence. In a long post, he said Tencent has felt internal pressure and acknowledged that rivals have built stronger momentum over the past few years. He also made a direct admission: Tencent’s overall computing capacity has been "seriously insufficient," and that shortfall has already slowed training for the Hunyuan model family as well as product development, with what he described as a fairly large impact. Tang argued that the industry may still be only in the first kilometer of an AI marathon, saying endurance matters more than an early start. He said the next-generation Hunyuan Hy4 will bring more breakthroughs, but added that Tencent cannot rely only on foundation models. In his view, algorithms set the ceiling while engineering determines delivery speed, and Tencent’s strongest advantage lies in real-world scenarios tied to WeChat-based office tools, documents, meetings, and enterprise services. He also reviewed several missteps, including heavy promotion for Yuanbao before the model and product were ready, long-running losses at DevTools, and the uneven early path for CodeBuddy and WorkBuddy. Tang said WorkBuddy later benefited from the Agent wave and shipped more than 40 versions in three months.