Tencent’s Hunyuan Turbo S aims to outpace DeepSeek in AI race

The Turbo S by Tencent not only delivers faster performance than its predecessors but also comes at a significantly lower cost, mirroring DeepSeek's disruptive, low-cost, open-source model, which has pushed other companies to adopt similar pricing strategies

Tencent has introduced its latest AI model, the Hunyuan Turbo S, which promises to deliver faster query responses compared to DeepSeek’s highly successful R1 model. This move marks another step in the fierce competition between Chinese tech giants, as DeepSeek's models continue to dominate both the domestic and international AI markets.

According to Tencent, the Hunyuan Turbo S can answer queries in less than a second, outperforming DeepSeek’s R1, Hunyuan T1, and other AI models that require additional time to process responses. Tencent claims that the Turbo S’s ability to generate near-instantaneous answers distinguishes it from other slower-thinking models, further emphasizing its technological edge in AI development.

In tests across a variety of fields such as knowledge, math, and reasoning, the Hunyuan Turbo S demonstrated performance comparable to DeepSeek-V3, the engine behind DeepSeek’s chatbot. The DeepSeek AI model has recently surpassed OpenAI's ChatGPT in terms of app store downloads, marking a major achievement for the Chinese company.

DeepSeek spurs AI race in China

DeepSeek’s success, particularly with its R1 and V3 models, has caused a stir in Silicon Valley and forced major Chinese tech companies like Tencent to fast-track the development of their AI models. In fact, Tencent’s new model launch is a direct response to DeepSeek’s rapidly growing influence. The release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022 prompted a shift in the global AI landscape, with Chinese companies scrambling to refine and introduce competitive offerings.

Not only does the Turbo S outperform its predecessors in speed, but Tencent also emphasized that it is significantly cheaper to use, with costs many times lower than earlier models. This pricing strategy mirrors DeepSeek’s disruptive approach, which has leveraged low-cost and open-source strategies to offer competitive pricing for users, forcing other companies to follow suit.

The launch of Turbo S follows Alibaba’s unveiling of the Qwen 2.5-Max model last month, which claimed to outperform DeepSeek-V3. As competition intensifies in China’s rapidly growing AI sector, Tencent’s focus on both performance and affordability highlights the pressure on Chinese firms to meet the challenges set by DeepSeek’s market-leading position.

With these developments, the AI race in China has entered a new phase, and it’s clear that the success of DeepSeek has shaken up the market, pushing Tencent and other tech giants to innovate at a breakneck pace.