Tencent Launches T1 Reasoning Model Amid Growing AI Competition in China

Chinese tech giant Tencent has launched the official version of its T1 reasoning model, intensifying competition in China’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence sector. The upgraded T1 model offers faster response times and enhanced capabilities for processing extended text documents, according to a post on Tencent’s official WeChat account.

T1 is designed to “keep the content logic clear and the text neat and clean,” with an “extremely low” hallucination rate. This launch comes amid heightened rivalry in China’s AI landscape, following DeepSeek’s introduction of models that offer comparable or superior performance to Western systems at substantially lower costs.

Tencent had previously released a preview version of T1 through various platforms, including its AI assistant application Yuanbao. The official version will be powered by Tencent’s Turbo S foundational language model, unveiled late last month, which the company claims processes queries faster than rival DeepSeek’s R1 model.

A chart published in the post comparing the T1 model to DeepSeek R1 showed that Tencent’s model outperformed on some knowledge and reasoning benchmarks. Tencent has significantly increased its AI investments in recent months. On Thursday, the company announced plans to increase capital expenditure in 2025, following already aggressive AI spending throughout 2024.