(Yicai) Feb. 25 -- Tencent Holdings has significantly increased paid promotion for the tech giant's artificial intelligence assistant application Yuanbao, which has surpassed ByteDance's Doubao and MoonShot AI's Kimi by downloads in the Chinese mainland, according to a new report.

Tencent has launched advertisements for Yuanbao on nearly all products in its product ecosystem, digital content marketing platform DataEye reported yesterday. The app ranked second on the free download charts on Apple's mainland App Store on Feb. 22, behind only DeepSeek-R1.

There was a boost in Yuanbao promotional material starting Feb. 15, with the number of ads released by Tencent surging 345 percent to 55,000 between Feb. 18 and Feb. 23 from the previous six days, according to DataEye. However, the figure did not reach peak levels previously set by Doubao and Kimi.

The intensity of Yuanbao's promotion is closely related to its integration with Deepseek's large language model, researchers at DataEye noted. Doubao has not yet integrated with DeepSeek-R1, they pointed out.

ByteDance does not consider the innovations of the long-chain thinking model DeepSeek-R1 to be an industry first, but the owner of TikTok was slower than artificial intelligence startups to recognize and capitalize on the new opportunities in LLMs, Chief Executive Liang Rubo told employees on Feb. 13.

Leading AI startups were set up and began work between 2018 and 2021, while ByteDance only started discussing frontier models such as OpenAI's GPT in its semi-annual technical review in 2023, Liang noted.

Liang's observations follow the release of an updated LLM from Chinese AI developer DeepSeek last month, which was described by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen as an "AI Sputnik moment." DeepSeek-R1's performance compares favorably with some leading LLMs but at a much lower cost.

ByteDance recognized the significant technological shift but did not respond quickly enough, Liang said. The Beijing-based company could have achieved similar results earlier had it been more attentive, he pointed out.

ByteDance will focus on pursuing the upper limits of "intelligence" this year rather than chasing the daily active users of any specific product, such as Doubao, Liang said, adding that this approach will inspire more experimentation and ensure critical technological milestones are not overlooked. That will include exploring new interactions and enhancing economies of scale, he said.

ByteDance recently adjusted its strategy and business structure, with Wu Yonghui, former vice president of Google DeepMind, joining to lead AI basic research, while its head of the AI business, Zhu Wenjia, switched focus to model applications.

As AI tech develops, China's internet industry gradually divides into two major camps: AI infrastructure and AI applications, according to an earlier report by Goldman Sachs.

Based on the dynamics disclosed by major companies, Alibaba Group Holding will consolidate its cloud computing advantage, Tencent will delve deeper into AI applications, optimizing user experience and business monetization capabilities through the intelligent upgrade of customer-end applications and leveraging traffic advantages, and ByteDance will work on AI basic research and model applications, solidifying its position in the short video field, Goldman Sachs noted.

Editor: Martin Kadiev