Tencent Pushes AI Transformation via Structural Upgrade to Centralize Compute and Models

According to TMTPost, Tencent's push into AI began in late 2025. In December 2025, the company carried out a reorganization: it established a new AI Infra department, an AI Data department and a Data Computing Platform department. Yao Shunyu was appointed Chief AI Scientist, while also heading AI Infra and the Large Language Model department, reporting to President Martin Lau.

By July 2026, the Multimodal Model department and the Large Language Model department were merged into the Foundation Model department, under Yao's unified management. In September 2026, his responsibilities were widened further, extending to the Foundation Model department, AI Infra and AI Data.

Throughout this period, Tencent also described its AI transformation as an effort to break with the traditional federation-style structure that had long granted business units independent budgets and decision-making power, and to bring computing power, data and model pipelines under centralized scheduling, in order to speed up large-model R&D and deployment. This is where the effort stands: a unified foundation-model organization is in place, with Yao in charge of the model, infrastructure and data functions together.