Physix Frontier · News Briefing Card (TMTPost · Oct 13, 2026)

Tencent H1 capex hits 84.72B yuan; Yao Shunyu named chief AI scientist

KEY FACTS

On October 8, Guangdong Provincial Party Secretary Huang Kunming visited Tencent's headquarters to survey progress in artificial intelligence research and development.
Tencent Chief AI Scientist Yao Shunyu accompanied Pony Ma at the research symposium, with the two seated next to each other.
Yao Shunyu left OpenAI to join Tencent in September 2025 and became chief AI scientist in December.
Tencent's capital expenditure in the first half of this year reached 84.72 billion yuan, up 81.9% year over year and exceeding the full total of last year.
Tencent dissolved AI Lab in March and in July merged its multimodal and large language model departments to form a foundation model department.

KEY DATA

84.72 billion yuanTencent H1 capex

81.9%Capex year-over-year growth

52.78 billion yuanQ2 capex

6.582 millionWorkBuddy MAU

PHYSIX OBSERVATION

With 84.7 billion yuan in half-year capex and a 28-year-old chief scientist, Tencent is declaring it is no longer standing on the sidelines. Yao Shunyu reports directly to Liu Chiping and runs the foundation model department, showing Tencent has pushed AI decision-making into the hands of its youngest frontline technologists. Competition among the tech giants has shifted from computing power to organizational speed and talent density, and having post-90s leaders at the helm may become the norm.

Source: TMTPost report