Tencent’s Pony Ma calls for half of staff to work on AI-native businesses

Ma made the remarks in his annual speech marking Tencent’s anniversary this week, urging a workforce of about 100,000 to embrace what he called an era-defining technology.[1] He said half of Tencent’s personnel should be redeployed to AI-native businesses, while existing businesses should use AI to improve efficiency.[1] Tencent management described the split as one group improving existing core businesses and another exploring AI-native opportunities and new growth.[2]

Tencent’s public relations director said the 50% figure described organizational change, not a target for job cuts.[3] Yicai Global reported that online rumors of a plan to lay off half the workforce were untrue.[2] Management said it wanted middle management to become flatter and more agile, and the initiative is intended to encourage frontline employees to take the initiative.[2] Ma also asked managers to limit prolonged discussions with staff when assigning new work.[3] Tencent had not yet disclosed how it intended to restructure.[3]

Tencent reported capital expenditure of 52.8 billion yuan, a 176% year-over-year increase.[4] The company said it made large AI-related prepayments to support model enhancements, inference needs for WorkBuddy and CodeBuddy, and Weixin AI initiatives.[4] Tencent said second-quarter free cash flow would have been 37.6 billion yuan excluding compute-procurement prepayments.[4] It also reported breakout user growth for WorkBuddy, its office-productivity service, and CodeBuddy, its coding tool, saying both led their fields in China.[4] Tencent reported high user willingness to pay for tokens through subscriptions and top-ups.[4]

Quartz reported that Tencent shares had fallen about one-third during the year, putting the company’s valuation near $470 billion.[3] It also reported that Tencent’s Yuanbao chatbot had not overtaken ByteDance’s Doubao and that Tencent’s large-language-model work had fallen behind.[3] The available statements set out a workforce direction and some AI spending, but not the mechanics of a reorganization.[1][3][4] Tencent was scheduled to release its third-quarter results on November 18.[3]