Tencent’s AI chatbot dethrones DeepSeek in China’s iOS app store amid fierce competition

The rise in popularity of Yuanbao follows Tencent’s move to integrate DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model in February

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The Tencent headquarters building in Shenzhen, in China’s southern Guangdong province. Photo: AFP

Iris Dengin ShenzhenandCoco Fengin Guangdong

Published: 5:00pm, 4 Mar 2025Updated: 5:21pm, 4 Mar 2025

An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings has displaced DeepSeek as the most downloaded free app in China’s iOS App Store.

Tencent’s Yuanbao took the No 1 spot in the free app list on Monday, with DeepSeek in second place and ByteDance’s Doubao in fourth, behind the country’s official taxation app.

The rise in popularity of Yuanbao, launched in May last year, followed Tencent’s move to integrate DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model in February, which offered users a new option alongside the tech giant’s home-grown Hunyuan model.

Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose 1.6 per cent on Tuesday.

The company, which operates China’s biggest social media app WeChat, added a download button for Yuanbao in WeChat last week, potentially giving the app’s 1.3 billion users easy access to the AI chatbot.

A person uses the DeepSeek app on a mobile phone, February 17, 2025. Photo: Xinhua

The number of daily active users of Yuanbao jumped to 3 million in late February from just hundreds of thousands earlier that month, said Li Bangzhu, founder of AIcpb.com, a website that tracks AI applications.