Meta's Muse agent has gone viral, and WeChat's ecosystem of 1 billion users has been revalued. On Tuesday, Tencent's Hong Kong-listed shares surged more than 7% during trading.
Tencent Holdings (00700.HK) surged significantly during trading on Tuesday, with its gain一度 exceeding 7%; the rise has slightly narrowed as of the time of this report.
After Meta's personal AI agent Muse rapidly gained popularity, investors began reassessing the potential advantages of platform companies with large social ecosystems in the age of AI agents. Tencent's WeChat, with over one billion users, has become a key focus of this expectation.
On the same day, Tencent released its latest image generation model, Hy Image 3.5 Preview, and began integrating it into products such as Yuanbao, as well as video editing and design tools. The launch of the new model, combined with a renewed global interest in AI trading, has positioned Tencent as one of the standout internet companies in Asia during this round of AI-driven market momentum.
The WeChat ecosystem has become a focal point of market attention.
This round of repricing was initially sparked by Meta. After launching its personal AI agent, Muse, this month, the product quickly rose to the top of the free app rankings on the U.S. Apple App Store. According to Sensor Tower data, Muse garnered approximately 730,000 downloads in the first five days following its release on September 8 local time, outperforming ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok during the same period. As a result, Meta’s stock surged more than 11% on Monday.
Muse can perform tasks on behalf of users, such as sending emails, filling out online forms, and arranging travel. Its market reception has prompted investors to reconsider a key question: Can platforms with established social networks, user data, and abundant application scenarios become the most direct entry point for personal AI agents?
Market analysis suggests that Tencent's rally on Tuesday reflects this trading thesis. Gary Tan, portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, said some investors are drawing parallels between Tencent and Meta, particularly given WeChat’s unique social ecosystem and its potential to host AI assistants at scale.
Tencent has not yet released a product that fully corresponds to Muse, nor has it disclosed any related commercialization timeline. Therefore, the stock price increase primarily reflects the market’s renewed assessment of the potential for integrating WeChat’s ecosystem with AI, rather than any newly realized revenue stream.
New image model rolled out synchronously; Tencent accelerates integration of AI products
On Tuesday, Tencent launched the Hy Image 3.5 Preview, further reinforcing this expectation. The company stated that the new model offers improved performance over its predecessor and is being integrated into Yuanbao, as well as film production and design tools, indicating that its AI strategy continues to expand beyond text models into images, multimodal capabilities, and real-world product applications.
Tencent stated that the company enlisted hundreds of internal designers to test the new model, and results showed that Hy Image 3.5 Preview performs comparably to ByteDance's Seedream 5.0 Pro, with some capabilities slightly surpassing Google's Nano Banana Pro and Alibaba's Qwen-Image-3.0 Pro.
For Tencent, image models have significant internal application potential. The company has a massive gaming business and employs thousands of game designers and artists, and generative image tools could soon be integrated into content creation workflows.
Over the past period, Tencent has also been strengthening its AI talent and R&D infrastructure. The company previously hired Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI researcher, as Chief AI Scientist, entrusting him with the task of refining AI infrastructure and model evaluation systems. In July of this year, Tian Yonglong, a former OpenAI computer vision researcher, joined Tencent and is currently leading the vision-language model efforts for the Hunyuan team.
Tencent previously lagged behind some of its Chinese internet peers in advancing cutting-edge large models. The company now emphasizes integrating models with existing products rather than competing solely on model leaderboards. WeChat, Yuanbao, gaming, and content creation tools have become the primary use cases for deploying its AI capabilities.
Global AI trading rebounds, with Asian tech stocks benefiting in tandem
Tencent's strong rally is part of a broader rebound in AI-related assets. Following positive market reception for Meta's Muse, global investors have increased their exposure to AI-related stocks. On Monday, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 4.3%, posting its largest single-day gain since August 4; during Asian trading hours on Tuesday, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both rose approximately 3.5% in early trading.
Reuters reported that Muse's initial success has reignited market optimism regarding demand for AI, driving Asian tech stocks higher in tandem with U.S. equities. After Alibaba (BABA.N) announced its next-generation AI chip and global data center expansion plan on Tuesday, Hong Kong-listed shares rose as much as 5% during trading.