Product Code Database
Tencent (p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the world's largest company in the video game industry based on its equity investments. Its associated stock-market-listed variable interest entity Tencent Holdings Ltd is incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Founded in 1998, its subsidiaries globally market various Internet-related services and products, including in entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other technology. Its twin-skyscraper headquarters, Tencent Seafront Towers (also known as Tencent Binhai Mansion) are based in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen. In December 2023, architect Büro Ole Scheeren unveiled the latest helix-inspired design of Tencent's new global headquarters in Shenzhen. Known as Tencent Helix, it will accommodate more than 23,000 employees across nearly 500,000 square meters.
Tencent is the world's largest video game vendor, as well as one of the largest companies in the world by market capitalization. It is among the largest social media, venture capital, and investment corporations. Its services include social networks, music, web portals, e-commerce, mobile games, internet services, payment systems, smartphones, and multiplayer online games. It operates the instant messengers Tencent QQ and WeChat, along with the news site QQ.com. The company surpassed a market value of US$500 billion in 2018, becoming the first Asian technology company to cross this valuation mark. It has since then emerged as the most valuable publicly traded company in China, and is the world's tenth most valuable company by market value as of February 2022. In 2015, 2018, and 2020, the company was ranked by Boston Consulting Group and Fast Company among the 50 most innovative companies worldwide. Tencent has stakes in over 600 companies, and began focusing on tech start-ups in Asia in 2017. TechCrunch characterized Tencent's investment strategy as letting its portfolio startups operate autonomously. Tencent's valuation approached US$1 trillion in January 2021 before it plummeted. Tencent Holdings was ranked 35th on the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 list.
South African media company Naspers purchased a 46.5% share of Tencent in 2001. As of 2023, it owns 26.16% through Prosus, which also owns a stake in Tencent's sister companies, such as OLX, VK, Trip.com Group, Delivery Hero, Bykea, Meesho, Stack Overflow, Udemy, Codecademy, Brainly and PayU. Tencent Holding Ltd was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 16 June 2004, and it was added as a Hang Seng Index Constituent Stock in 2008.
The company originally derived income solely from advertising and premium users of QQ, who pay monthly fees to receive extras. By 2005, charging for use of QQ mobile, its cellular value-added service, and licensing its penguin character, which could be found on snack food QQ Games on AIM: Another Penguin Aims for the Casual Market gotgame.com, 13 January 2009 and clothing, had also become income generators. By 2008, Tencent was seeing profit growth from the sale of virtual goods. A Chinese Web Giant's Sizzling Success Bloomberg, 26 November 2008, 9:11 am EST
In June 2007, Tencent established its charity foundation, becoming the first Chinese internet company to do so.
While Tencent's services have included online gaming since 2004, around 2007/2008, it rapidly increased its offerings by licensing games. While at least two, Crossfire and Dungeon Fighter Online, were originally produced by South Korean game developers, Tencent now makes its own games. On 21 January 2011, Tencent launched WeChat (微信), a social media Mobile app. Now branded as WeChat, the app is one of the "super apps", due to its wide range of functions and platforms, and its over 1 billion monthly active users.
Tencent in 2013 increased its stake in Kingsoft Network Technology, a subsidiary of Kingsoft Corporation, to 18%. Tencent previously had a 15.68% stake in the company and raised the stake through a US$46.98 million investment. Tencent took part in Activision Blizzard splitting from Vivendi as a passive investor in 2013 Activision buys itself back from Vivendi for $8 billion joystiq.com, Retrieved 28 February 2014. and now owns less than 4.9% of the shares as of 2017. On 17 September 2013, it was announced that Tencent had invested $448 million for a minority share in Chinese search engine Sogou.com, the subsidiary of Sohu, Inc.
On 15 January 2014, Tencent said it would invest HKD 1.5 billion (US$193.45 million) in logistics and warehouse firm China South City Holdings Ltd to develop its e-commerce and logistics business. On 27 February 2014, Tencent purchased a 20% stake in restaurant ratings and group-buying website Dianping for $400 million. On 10 March 2014, Tencent bought a 15% stake in Chinese e-commerce website JD.com Inc. by paying cash and handing over its e-commerce businesses Paipai, QQ Wanggou and a stake in Yixun to JD.com to build a stronger competitor to Alibaba Group.
On 22 May 2014, JD.com got listed on NASDAQ and Tencent expanded its stake in the company to 17.43% on a fully diluted basis by investing an additional US$1,325 million. Tencent Interim Report 2014 Tencent Official Site, Retrieved 23 October 2014. On 27 March 2014, it was announced that Tencent had agreed to pay about $500 million for a 28 per cent stake in South Korea's CJ Games. On 27 June 2014, Tencent announced that it had agreed to buy a 19.9 per cent stake in Chinese e-commerce website 58.com (WUBA) Inc. for $736 million. On 17 April 2015, Tencent announced it bought an additional $400 million worth of shares, rising its stake in the company to about 25%. On 16 October 2014, via its wholly held subsidiary Hongze Lake Investment Ltd, Tencent announced that it had bought a 7% stake in lottery technology firm China LotSynergy Holdings Ltd for HKD 445.5 million (US$57.4 million).
On 23 October 2014, Tencent pitched in $145 million for a 10 per cent stake in Koudai Gouwu, a Chinese mobile shopping portal. In November 2014, the company announced a deal with HBO which would give it exclusive rights for distribution in China.Osawa, Juro. "Tencent to Distribute HBO Dramas, Movies Online in China" , The Wall Street Journal, 24 November 2014. Accessed 10 August 2015. On 9 December 2014, Chinese taxi-hailing app Didi Dache announced that it had raised more than $700 million in a funding round led by Tencent and Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings. On 29 December 2014, Tencent launched the website for WeBank (China), China's first online-only bank. Trials for the service commenced on 18 January 2015.
In 2014, Tencent sued its major competitor NetEase alleging copyright infringement. Tencent used its leverage from the suit to convince NetEase to sublicense music rights from Tencent. The sub-licensing arrangement that resulted then became a model used by other online music platforms in China.
Private enterprises in China are required to have an in-firm committee or branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) if three or more CCP members are among their employees. In 2016, Tencent's CCP branch was recognized as one of the one hundred best such branches in the country. (2025). 9780300268836, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300268836 It provides communications and education platforms including a CCP activity hall, WeChat channel, and an intranet for CCP members where they can take classes related to government and party policies. The Tencent Party Member Activity Center has a dedicated CCP member activity area of more than 6,000 square meters. More than 1 million yuan is allocated for CCP activities per year.
In 2016, Tencent, together with Foxconn and luxury-car dealer Harmony New Energy Auto founded Future Mobility, a car startup (now defunct) that aimed to sell all-electric fully autonomous premium cars. On 28 March 2017, Tesla, Inc. announced Tencent had purchased a 5% stake in Tesla for US$1.78 billion, the automotive control systems of which it subsequently successfully performed penetration-testing until 2019.
In a "direct challenge to Chinese search engine Baidu," in May 2017, Tencent entered news feed and search functions for its WeChat app, which the Financial Times reported was used by 770 million people at the time.
In May 2017, Tencent surpassed Wells Fargo to enter the world's top 10 most valuable companies. Tencent has also entered an agreement with the Wuhu City Council to build the world's first eSports town in the city, which comprises an eSports theme park, eSports university, a cultural and creative park, an animation industrial park, creative block, tech entrepreneurial community and Tencent Cloud's data center. The site will be used for the education and accommodation of future eSports players, as well as hosting national eSports events and serving as a hub for Tencent's game development. Aside from Wuhu, another eSports theme park is planned in Chengdu.
In June 2017, Tencent became the 8th most valuable company in BrandZ's Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, signalling its growing influence globally as well as the rise of Chinese brands. Alibaba overtook Tencent as Asia's most valuable company as its stocks surged after the company hosted its 2017 Investor's day. The company has also developed its own voice assistant Xiaowei, and was in the midst of discussion to acquire Rovio Entertainment, the developer of Angry Birds. At the same time, Tencent introduced its mini-programs feature that allows smartphone users to access mobile apps across the globe on WeChat without downloading them.
In July 2017, Tencent bought a 9% share in Frontier Developments, the creator of the ' and Planet Coaster franchises; as well as developer for Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 & 3. In August 2017, after Tencent announced the second quarter 2016 financial report, the stock price rose by 6.2% in the Hong Kong stock market, and the market value reached US$429 billion. Tencent became the second Asian company after Alibaba Group to surpass US$400 billion market cap. Tencent has also created an alliance to its own AI self-driving program, similar to Baidu's Apollo Project''', recruiting numerous industry players in the automotive industry. It is also collaborating with L'Oréal, the world's largest cosmetics company, to explore digital marketing under the Joint Business Partnership (JBP) agreement.
According to a report by Sina Tech in October 2017, Tencent employed over 7,000 members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that CCP members took a leading role in the development of WeChat. "With over 7,000 CCP members, accounting for approximately 23% of the total workforce, and more than 60% of whom are core technical personnel, the number of CCP members at Tencent is increasing by nearly a thousand every year. In Tencent, a leading internet company, CCP members are becoming the main driving force in shaping the company's development direction."
In November 2017, Tencent revealed that it had purchased a 12% stake in Snap Inc. in the open market, with plans to help establish Snapchat as a gaming platform. Tencent remained the largest video game publisher in the world by revenue, and had a market capitalisation of around $475 billion. In the same month, Tencent announced that WeChat reached 980 million monthly active users, and said to be earmarking billions of dollars to amass a catalogue of user-generated content, in competition with YouTube. The company became the first Asian company to cross US$500 billion valuation, surpassing Facebook to enter the top 5 list of the world's biggest firms.
In January 2018, Tencent and The Lego Group, the world's largest toy company, teamed up to jointly develop online games and potentially a social network aimed at children. It also launched its first unmanned shop in Shanghai. Tencent led a US$5.2 billion investment in Wanda Group, together with JD.com, Sunac and Suning Group, to acquire shares in the conglomerate. Wanda Commercial was renamed Wanda Commercial Management Group. Tencent bought a 5% to 10% minority stake in Skydance Media. On 23 January 2018, Tencent and Carrefour reached strategic co-operation agreement in China.
On 15 August 2018, Tencent reported a profit decline in the second quarter of 2018, ending a growth streak of more than a decade, as investment gains slid and the government's scrutiny of the gaming business weighed on the company. Shares of Tencent fell 3% in morning trade in Hong Kong after the rare drop in quarterly profit was reported, extending a slide that has wiped nearly $50 billion in market value from the company in that week. The sell-off dragged down many other Chinese internet stocks as well. On 6 September 2018, Luckin Coffee signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tencent. 瑞幸咖啡与腾讯签署战略合作 中国咖啡市场及发展前景分析 凤凰网，7 September 2018. 中国咖啡市场白热化 瑞幸咖啡与腾讯达成战略合作 搜狐网，6 September 2018.
China's government designated Tencent as one of its "AI champions" in 2018.
In November 2018, Tencent Charity Foundation donated RMB$1 billion to establish the Xplorer Prize award for outstanding young scientists in areas of basic science and cutting-edge technologies.
In October 2019, Tencent began sending out refunds to customers after cancelling the broadcast of NBA games in response to the Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey's social media comments in support of protests in Hong Kong.
In May 2020, Tencent purchased the rights to create System Shock 3 and any further sequels from OtherSide Entertainment. On 29 June 2020, Tencent acquired the video-on-demand service iflix in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In September 2020, Tencent picked Singapore as its hub in Asia, joining rivals ByteDance and Alibaba in the race to reinforce their presence closer to home after complications in India and the United States. Lazy Audio was acquired from Shenzhen Lanren Online Technology Co for 2.7 billion yuan in January 2021.
In January 2022, reports emerged that Tencent was one of the major tech conglomerates to receive a fine from the SAMR for failing to report their merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in advance. According to China's antitrust law, official approval is required before the completion of a M&A deal if the combined annual revenue of all entities involved is at least RMB 10 billion (US$1.57 billion), and at least two entities have at least RMB 400 million (US$62.7 million) in annual revenue. Of the 13 deals cited in total by the SAMR, each carried a fine of RMB 500,000 (US$78,700) and Tencent received a total fine of RMB 4.5 million (US$710,000) for its involvement in nine deals.
On 11 January 2022, it was announced that Tencent was in talks to acquire Xiaomi-backed Black Shark, one of the largest gaming smartphone makers in China. The acquisition would have been Tencent's first in a hardware maker and would have overseen Black Shark's transition into a manufacturer of VR headsets to support Tencent's plans for its metaverse business in the future. Reports initially suggested that Black Shark would be acquired for RMB 2.7 billion (US$420 million), although Tencent walked away from the deal due to regulatory scrutiny of metaverse businesses in China.
In June 2022, Tencent posted its slowest revenue gain since going public in 2004, partly caused by a 15% decrease in advertising revenue. The decline was attributed to the pandemic and tighter regulations imposed by the Chinese government. In September 2022, Tencent acquired a 49.9% stake and 5% voting rights in Guillemot Brothers Limited, Ubisoft's parent company. On 16 September 2022, Tencent took a minority stake in Mordhau studio Triternion.
In November 2022, Tencent announced that it would divest the majority of its US$20.3 billion stake in Meituan through a dividend distribution to shareholders, in part due to China's earlier regulatory crackdown on tech giants. In January 2023, OpenSecrets reported that Tencent spent over $6.3 million lobbying the U.S. federal government after coming under greater regulatory scrutiny in 2020. By January 2023, Tencent had sold its share in Tesla.
Majority owned subsidiary China Literature acquired Tencent Animation and Comics in December 2023.
On 22 December 2023, the Chinese government's regulations to curb online gaming cost Tencent $46 Billion in Market Capitalisation. Later, on 27 December 2023, the first of trading after the Chinese government vowed to make improvements to the proposed gaming rules, the firm's stock rose by 5%.
Also in December 2023, Tencent accelerated the pace of Share repurchase, increasing the pace of daily purchases to about HK$1 billion (with an average of HK$375 million per day) and made a record HK$10 billion share purchase.
In March 2024, the firm uploaded its revenue report for the 4th quarter of the year 2023, recording a surprising 7% rise in the fourth-quarter revenue, slightly missing the expected mark.
In December 2024, Apple decided to have talks with Tencent and TikTok owner ByteDance for integrating their artificial intelligence models into iPhones that are sold in China. In 2025 Tencent released an AI 3D model generator, Hunyuan3D.
On 7 January 2025, Tencent was added to a watchlist of companies allegedly working with China's military, along with CATL.
In March 2025, Tencent released Hunyuan T1, a reasoning language model based on the Transformer-Mamba architecture.
| 2015 Annual Report 2019 | 102,863 | 29,108 | 306,818 | |
| 2016 | 151,938 | 41,447 | 395,899 | |
| 2017 | 237,760 | 72,471 | 554,672 | |
| 2018 | 312,694 | 79,984 | 723,521 | 54 |
| 2019 | 377,289 | 95,888 | 953,986 | 63 |
| 2020 | 482,064 | 160,125 | 1,333,425 | 86 |
| 2021 | 560,118 | 227,810 | 1,612,364 | 113 |
| 2022 | 554,552 | 188,709 | 1,578,131 | 108 |
| 2023 | 609,015 | 118,048 | 1,577,246 | 105 |
| 2024 Annual Report 2024 | 660,257 | 196,467 | 1,780,995 | 111 |
| +Sales by business segment (2024) !Business !share | |
| Gaming | 48.34% |
| Fintech and Business services | 32.10% |
| Marketing services | 18.38% |
| Other | 1.18% |
On 10 April 2010, Tencent launched Tencent Weibo, a now defunct microblogging service.
WeChat is a mobile app with functions such as voice- and text messaging, WeChat Pay, and a friends-only social network called Moments. It is the most popular social mobile application in China and some overseas Chinese communities, for instance, Malaysia. As of 2017, WeChat has been unsuccessful in penetrating major international markets outside of China.
Outside of companies subsidiary of its game division, Tencent as a whole has many major and minor investments in domestic and, since the 2010s, foreign game companies.
| Funcom | Oslo, Norway | Wholly-owned | |||
| Leyou (Athlon Games, Digital Extremes) | Hong Kong | ||||
| Riot Games | Los Angeles, United States | ||||
| Sharkmob | Malmö, Sweden | ||||
| Sumo Group | Sheffield, United Kingdom | ||||
| Grinding Gear Games | Auckland, New Zealand | ||||
| Visual Arts (Key, KineticNovel) | Osaka, Japan | July 2023 | Majority | ||
| Turtle Rock Studios | Lake Forest, United States | ||||
| Wake Up Interactive (Soleil, Valhalla Game Studios) | Hong Kong | ||||
| Inflexion Games | Edmonton, Canada | ||||
| Fulqrum Publishing | Prague, Czechia | ||||
| Techland | Wrocław, Poland | 24 July 2023 | |||
| Klei Entertainment | Vancouver, Canada | ||||
| 10 Chambers Collective | Stockholm, Sweden | ||||
| Yager Development | Berlin, Germany | ||||
| Fatshark | Stockholm, Sweden | ||||
| Miniclip | Neuchâtel, Switzerland | ||||
| Supercell | Helsinki, Finland | ||||
| Don't Nod | Paris, France | 42% | |||
| Pocket Gems | San Francisco, United States | 2015 | 38% | ||
| Shift Up | Seoul, South Korea | December 2022 | 35.03% | ||
| Epic Games | Cary, United States | 35% | |||
| Ubisoft | Paris, France | 34.9% | |||
| Bloober Team | Kraków, Poland | 22% | |||
| Marvelous | Tokyo, Japan | 20% | |||
| Sea Ltd (Garena) | Singapore | 2010 | 18.7% | ||
| Netmarble | Seoul, South Korea | 17.66% | |||
| FromSoftware | Tokyo, Japan | 16.25% | |||
| Remedy Entertainment | Helsinki, Finland | 14% | |||
| Krafton (Bluehole Studio) | Seongnam-si, South Korea | 13.87% | |||
| Kakao | Jeju City, South Korea | 13.54% | |||
| Paradox Interactive | Stockholm, Sweden | 10.07% | |||
| Frontier Developments | Cambridge, United Kingdom | 9% | |||
| Kadokawa Corporation | Tokyo, Japan | 6.86% |
In 2015, Tencent launched Tencent Pictures (s=腾讯影业), a film distributor and a production company that creates and distributes films based on , , animated series and . In the same year, Tencent launched Tencent Penguin Pictures (s=腾讯企鹅影视) a production unit focusing on online dramas and minor investments in feature films. It is under the Online Media Business Unit at Tencent and works closely with Tencent Video.
In September 2017, Tencent has announced plans to introduce Manhua to every market around the world, with the first being North America. It will be working with San Francisco-based digital publisher Tapas Media, a partnership that will see English-language releases of several popular online Chinese titles.
In December 2017, Tencent's music arm, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), and Spotify agreed to swap a 10% stake in each other's music businesses, forming an alliance in the music industry which Martin Lau (president of Tencent) described as a "strategic collaboration".
In October 2019, Tencent Music reached a streaming music distribution agreement with CD Baby and TuneCore to provide independent music artists who distribute music through CD Baby and TuneCore access to the Chinese music market through Tencent's music streaming services QQ Music, KuGou, and Kuwo.
In March 2020, Tencent acquired 10% of Vivendi's stake in Universal Music Group, the world's largest music group. In addition, it was given the option to buy another 10% with the same conditions.
In June 2020, Tencent bought 1.6% of Warner Music Group's shares after WMG launched its IPO in the same month.
On May 27, 2025, Hybe Corporation announced it would sell all of its shares in SM Entertainment to Tencent Music.
In response to the dominance of the Chinese e-commerce market by Tencent competitor Alibaba Group, Tencent took great effort in its e-commerce platforms. On 10 March 2014, Tencent bought a 15 per cent stake in Chinese e-commerce website JD.com Inc. by paying cash and handing over its e-commerce businesses Paipai.com, QQ Wanggou, and a stake in Yixun to JD.com, as well as purchasing a stake in e-commerce website 58 Tongcheng. In accordance to this agreement, JD.com would receive exclusive access to Tencent's WeChat and MobileQQ platforms. In May 2014, JD became the first Chinese e-commerce company to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange, under its ticker 'JD'.
On 31 December 2015, JD announced that they will stop supporting services on Paipai.com after being unable to deal with issues involving fake goods, and had integrated the Paipai.com team within its other e-commerce platforms. In a 3-month transitional period, Paipai.com would be fully shut down by 1 April 2016. JD relaunched PaiPai.com as PaiPai Second Hand (拍拍二手) to compete alongside 58 Tongcheng's Zhuanzhuan.com, both partially owned by Tencent, against Alibaba's Xianyu in the Used good e-commerce market.
Tencent was reported in 2017 to be working with China's Central Bank to develop a central payments clearing platform for online payments.
On 31 December 2021, it was reported Tencent had bought a stake in the UK digital bank, Monzo.
In 2008, Tencent released a media player, available for free download, under the name QQ Player. Tencent also launched Tencent Traveler, a web browser based on Trident. It became the third most-visited browser in China in 2008. Products & Services > Instant Messaging Service Tencent Official Site Mozilla Takes on Microsoft in China Bloomberg, 11 January 2008, 7:21 am EST
QQ Haiwai is Tencent's first venture into international real estate listings and information and is the result of a partnership with Chinese international real estate website Juwai.com. Haiwai was announced at Tencent's annual regional summit in Beijing on 21 December 2016.
In 2017, Tencent launched its own credit score system called Tencent Credit, with a process similar to that of Sesame Credit, operated by its competitor, the Alibaba Group, through its subsidiary Ant Financial.
Tencent officially commences operations of its first insurance agency platform, WeSure Internet Insurance Ltd. (WeSure), to work with domestic insurance companies such as Ping An Insurance.
In August 2017, Tencent released AI Medical Innovation System (AIMIS) or Miying (觅影 in Chinese), which has two core competencies: AI medical imaging and AI-assisted diagnosis. The AI Medical Innovation System (AIMIS) is capable of helping doctors screen for various diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy, lung cancer, and esophageal cancer, through its AI-assisted medical image analysis. Its AI-assisted medical diagnosis engine enables doctors to identify and estimate the risk of over 700 diseases, thereby improving the accuracy and efficiency of diagnoses. The system is currently undergoing clinical validation in more than 100 major hospitals in China. It has already assisted doctors in interpreting over 100 million medical images and has served nearly one million patients. Tencent's data indicates that recognition accuracy reaches 90% for esophageal cancer, 97% for diabetic retinopathy, and 97.2% for colorectal cancer. Overall, Chinese medical institutions and companies are adopting a proactive approach toward AI. Nearly 80% of hospitals and medical enterprises plan to implement or have already implemented medical AI applications, and more than 75% of hospitals believe that these applications will become widespread in the future.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tencent helped source 1.2 million protective masks for American medical staff combating the virus.
In October 2020, Tencent's AIMIS Image Cloud was introduced. AIMIS Image Cloud was designed to help patients manage their medical images and give permission to medical professionals to access their exams and reports. The AIMIS platform supports full images on the cloud to reduce repeated exams. It can also connect medical institutions at all levels through cloud based Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), allowing patients to take examinations in primary medical institutions and obtain expert diagnosis remotely. Doctors can conduct online consultations through Tencent real-time audio and video facilities when they encounter difficult cases and work collaboratively on images to communicate more efficiently.
On 26 May 2020, Tencent announced it planned to invest 500 billion yuan (US$70 billion) over the next five years in new digital infrastructure, a major hi-tech initiative that would bolster Beijing's efforts to drive economic recovery in the post-coronavirus era.
At the end of June 2020, Tencent has increased its direct stake in Nio to 15.1% after acquiring more of the Chinese electric vehicle maker's New York-listed shares recently. Tencent spent $10 million to buy 1.68 million American Depositary Shares earlier in the month, according to Nio's latest filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Shenzhen-based social media and entertainment conglomerate also controls another 16% stake in Nio's ADSs through three of its units. Tencent was the second-largest Nio shareholder in terms of voting rights after Li Bin, founder of the automaker, who held 13.8% in shares but 47% voting rights, according to a March filing by the company. As of 8 July, they bought another amount of shares increasing their stake in Nio to 16.3%.
Tencent's headquarters is currently the Tencent Binhai Mansion, also known as the Tencent Seafront Towers, which is located in Shenzhen's Nanshan District. In addition to its headquarters in Shenzhen, Tencent also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guangzhou.
Tencent has a unitary board consisting of Tencent co-founder, CEO, and chairman Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, executive director and President of Tencent Martin Lau, non-executive directors Koos Bekker and Charles Searle of Naspers, and independent non-executive directors Li Dongsheng, Iain Bruce, Ian Stone, and Yang Siushun. Tencent's governance is aided by its Strategy Department, commonly known as SD, which provides business analytics for the corporation's various divisions.
In 2012, Tencent launched Tencent YouTu Lab, an AI research department that focuses on computer vision, including optical character recognition (OCR), image understanding, and generation.
In 2020, as part of Tencent's efforts to combat the COVID-19 and future pandemic, Tencent established an AI Joint Lab with respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan to conduct research on disease screening, prevention, and outbreak warnings.
In 2023, Tencent debuted its large language model Hunyuan for enterprise use. In 2023, Tencent announced its partnership with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) to establish a Digital Seed Bank at the Tencent Science and Technology Museum.
For the occasion of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Tencent released a mobile game titled "Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech", in which players have 19 seconds to generate as many claps as possible for the party leader.
In August 2019, it was reported that Tencent collaborated with the propaganda department of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Daily to develop "patriotic games".
In a December 2020 article in Foreign Policy, a former senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency stated that the CIA concluded that Tencent received funding from the Ministry of State Security early on in its foundation. This was said to be a "seed investment" that was provided "when they were trying to build out the Great Firewall and the monitoring technology." Tencent denied this allegation.
In 2021, it was reported that Tencent and Ant Group were working with the People's Bank of China to develop a Central bank digital currency.
In June 2022, Tencent partnered with Shanghai United Media Group to launch a plan to develop domestic and foreign influencers.
Tencent participates in the Science Based Targets initiative launched by the UN Global Compact, which provides a platform for setting science-based net-zero targets. In 2022, Tencent established a goal of making the company and its supply chain carbon neutral.
In 1996, an Israeli company named Mirabilis released one of the first stand alone instant messaging clients named ICQ. Three years later, Tencent released a copied version of ICQ, naming it OICQ, which stands for Open ICQ. After losing a lawsuit against AOL, which bought ICQ in 1998, for violating ICQ's intellectual property rights, Tencent released a new version of OICQ in December 2000 and rebranded it Tencent QQ. With its model of free-to-use and charging for customizing personal avatars, QQ hit 50 million users in its second year, 856 million users and at most 45.3 million synchronous users in 2008.
During early stages of company development and expansion, Tencent has been widely accused of stealing ideas from its competitors and creating counterfeit copies of their products. Some of the criticisms aimed at Tencent in this regard are that QQ farm was a direct copy of Happy Farm, QQ dance originated from Audition Online, and that QQ speed featured gameplay highly similar to Crazyracing Kartrider. In January 2023, Tencent's trailer for their new MMORPG, Tarisland, was said to resemble Blizzard's World of Warcraft. In July 2025, Tencent had been sued by Sony Interactive Entertainment because one of their games Light of Motiram heavily resembled Horizon Zero Dawn in terms of setting, protagonist, storyline, themes and gameplay.
In a partial effort to rebuild the reputation of Tencent lost from allegations of copying, Tencent adjusted its strategy by aggressively investing in the acquisition of other companies, rather than in the replication of them. By 2020, Tencent had invested in over 800 companies across the world. During 2012 and 2019, under the direction of President Martin Lau, Tencent has invested from minority stakes to majority stakes in world-wide-famous game companies such as Riot Games, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, SuperCell, and Krafton. While aggressive acquisitions may benefit Tencent due to factors such as reduction in competition and monopolization, it may not benefit the acquired companies in terms of their growth and innovation. Colin Huang, founder of Pinduoduo, said "Tencent won't die when Pinduoduo dies, because it has tens of thousands of sons."
The United States Department of Defense added Tencent to its list of entities associated with the Chinese military in January 2025; such companies are either considered to be either controlled by the Chinese military or serve the growth of China's civil-military complex. The listing is primarily an advisory, having no direct impact, but nominally is considered a blacklisting. Tencent representatives said the listing was "clearly a mistake" and will have no impact on their business but plan to appeal the listing.
However, Tim Sweeney, the CEO and founder of Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, tweeted that his company would never follow suit and punish people for expressing their opinions, even though Tencent is a 40% stakeholder in Epic. In a statement, Sweeney said it would "never happen on his watch", and emphasized that Epic is an American company, implying that it would not compromise an ethos of free speech to curry favor with Chinese authorities in the pursuit of maximum profit.
Later in October 2019, Tencent announced it would stop broadcasting Houston Rockets NBA games in China due to a tweet made by Daryl Morey, general manager of the Rockets, that was supportive of protestors in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Although Morey's tweet was hastily deleted, news of it was quickly reported all around the world, and the NBA went on to spend months attempting damage control in China.
In December 2019, the Chinese government ordered Tencent to improve the firm's user data rules for its apps, which regulators regarded to be in violation of censorship rules.
In January 2021, a proposed class action lawsuit was filed in California against Tencent, alleging user censorship and surveillance via WeChat.
In November 2022, Sustainalytics downgraded Tencent to "non-compliant" with the United Nations Global Compact principles due to complicity with censorship.
|
|
