Tencent shares jump after unveiling new AI image model

Tencent Holdings' shares surged on Tuesday following the unveiling of a preview version of its Hunyuan image-generation model. The Chinese technology giant's stock rose 6.6% to HK$458.4 by 03:55 GMT, up from a 2.6% increase on Monday. Tencent introduced Hy-Image-3.5-Preview, which boasts text-to-image generation, image-to-image generation, and multi-turn editing capabilities.

The model can create images at resolutions up to 4K and supports multimodal inputs, as documented by Tencent Cloud. This launch comes amid intensifying competition among Chinese tech firms in the generative AI space. Tencent has been expanding its Hunyuan model family across various products and services, such as its Yuanbao AI assistant and other applications.

The move also follows Alibaba's announcement at its Apsara Conference, where the tech giant outlined an ambitious AI strategy. Alibaba aims to train a new model with parameters ranging from 5 trillion to 10 trillion, potentially doubling or quadrupling the size of its current flagship Qwen 3.8 Max model. Additionally, Alibaba unveiled a new AI chip as part of its efforts to build a comprehensive ecosystem encompassing chips, data centers, models, and AI agents.

Chinese technology shares experienced a general rally on Tuesday, with Hong Kong's AI stocks among the top performers.