Tencent launches upgraded T1 AI model, boosts China’s AI race

• Published On: 23 March 2025 at 19:44

Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, unveiled the official version of its T1 reasoning model on Friday night, escalating competition in China's rapidly growing artificial intelligence sector.

Tencent announced the enhanced T1 model through its official WeChat account, promising faster response times and improved performance on long-text processing tasks. The company stressed that T1 maintains "clear content logic and clean text" while keeping hallucination rates "extremely low"—a "key challenge in AI development."

The launch comes after increased competition in China's AI landscape, particularly after DeepSeek introduced models with performance comparable to, or better than, Western alternatives at significantly lower costs.

Tencent had previously released a preview version of T1 across multiple platforms, including its AI assistant app Yuanbao. The newly launched official version is based on Tencent's Turbo S foundational language model, which was unveiled last month. According to the company, Turbo S performs queries faster than DeepSeek's competing R1 model.

A performance chart included in Tencent's announcement showed T1 outperforming DeepSeek R1 on specific knowledge and reasoning benchmarks, indicating Tencent's push to dominate the space.

The company increased its AI investments throughout 2024 and intends to increase capital expenditures even further in 2025, demonstrating its commitment to advancing AI technologies.