Ma Huateng, Tencent’s chairman and CEO, has put the company’s weight behind Yuanbao — a fledgling AI social app — by promising a RMB1 billion cash red‑packet promotion over the Lunar New Year period. Speaking at Tencent’s 2026 employee conference, Ma framed the giveaway as an attempt to “recreate” the viral moment WeChat sparked more than a decade ago when digital hongbao changed holiday social habits. The incentive requires users to update the Yuanbao app to version 2.55.0 or later to join the distribution pool.
The red‑packet stunt is only one strand of a broader push to fold Yuanbao into Tencent’s content and AI ecosystem. Ma said Tencent is accelerating hiring and organisational change since the arrival of Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI senior researcher now titled chief AI scientist in the CEO/president’s office and put in charge of core AI infrastructure and large‑model work. Tencent has reorganised its large‑model R&D into new AI Infra, AI Data and data‑computing platform units and is emphasising “Co‑design” processes to deepen collaboration between its Hunyuan large model and Yuanbao.
Beyond giveaways and technical plumbing, Ma sketched out a product roadmap for Yuanbao that leans on social creativity and content cross‑pollination. The company plans to introduce “Yuanbao Pai,” a new AI‑driven multi‑user social mode designed for shared entertainment and collaboration; Tencent will also surface content from QQ Music and Tencent Video inside Yuanbao so friends can watch, listen and interact with AI in real time. Ma said the feature draws on experiments originally incubated inside Tencent Meeting and will combine Tencent’s social graph and communications tools with AI capabilities.
The move is both tactical and symbolic. The original WeChat red‑packet moment in 2011 demonstrated how a modest product nudge can produce massive network effects and reshape user behaviour; Tencent appears to be hoping for a repeat as it shifts from platform dominance to a future defined by AI‑enabled social experiences. At the same time, the promotion serves a practical user‑acquisition purpose: Yuanbao needs scale to train models, test multi‑party interactions and make value from integrated content and services.
But success is far from guaranteed. The market for social apps is more crowded and commercially complex than it was in 2011, with ByteDance and others vying for attention and regulators more attuned to market concentration and data use. High‑profile hires and organisational reshuffles signal seriousness, yet building sustainable engagement from a promotional spike requires product distinctiveness, clear monetisation and careful handling of privacy and content moderation concerns. Tencent’s strategy will be watched closely as a test case of whether big tech can leverage large models to reinvigorate social networking at scale.