Investing.com-- Tencent’s Hong Kong shares rose sharply on Monday after the Chinese internet giant said its Weixin messaging app was testing integration of DeepSeek’s wildly popular artificial intelligence models.
Tencent Holdings Ltd (HK:0700) jumped as much as 6.6% to a near four-year high of HK$512.0, underpinning choppy gains in the broader Hang Seng index.
The company said that it had begun allowing some users access to DeepSeek AI in conducting internet searches.
The move marks the integration of DeepSeek into China’s most popular messaging app, and also shows a growing rush among major Chinese internet firms to tie up with the AI firm.
Separately, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) Inc (HK:9888) also said that it will allow internet searches through DeepSeek, as well as its Ernie AI model. But Hong Kong shares of the internet search giant slid over 6%, as investors locked in some recent profits ahead of its quarterly earnings, which are due later this week.
DeepSeek shook up global markets in late January, as it appeared to be able to match rival offerings such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT while using older hardware and a fraction of the latter’s budget.
DeepSeek overtook ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store.
The AI model ramped up optimism over China’s AI capabilities, sparking an extended rally in local technology and internet stocks with exposure to AI. The Hang Seng index surged nearly 20% since mid-January.
Outside China, DeepSeek’s release sparked steep losses in chipmaking stocks such as TSMC (NYSE:TSM) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), as investors questioned the need for increased AI investment when companies could adopt leaner and more cost efficient models.
DeepSeek's release also saw several Chinese internet majors, such as Baidu and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) (HK:9988), launch new versions of their in-house AIs.