Tencent Holdings, a Chinese technology conglomerate, is secretly building an artificial intelligence agent for its WeChat messaging app to connect with millions of miniprograms. The company hired former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu last September to lead its internal AI model development. The WeChat team currently tests third-party models from regional competitors like Zhipu, Alibaba, and DeepSeek to power the new tool. Tencent plans to launch a trial of the feature for select users by midyear before a wider third-quarter rollout.
