Tencent, big release!
On March 18, Tencent Holdings released its fourth quarter and full-year financial reports for 2025.
Tencent Holdings’ announcement showed that the company’s operating income in the fourth quarter was 194.371 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%; the profit attributable to the company’s equity holders was 58.26 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%.
In terms of full-year results, in 2025, Tencent Holdings' operating income was 751.766 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%; the profit attributable to the company's equity holders was 224.842 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%.
In terms of business data, in 2025, Tencent's value-added service business revenue will be 369.281 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%; marketing service business revenue will be 144.973 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19%; financial technology and enterprise service business revenue will be 229.435 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%.
Business Highlights:
AI drives profit improvement, and the AI product matrix further expands
The financial report shows that AI has produced substantial gains in Tencent’s main business, driving core business growth to outperform the industry average. The three major sectors achieved steady growth in the fourth quarter of 2025: value-added service revenue increased by 14% year-on-year to 89.92 billion yuan; marketing service revenue increased by 17% year-on-year to 41.12 billion yuan; financial technology and enterprise service business revenue increased by 8% year-on-year to 60.82 billion yuan.
At the same time, Tencent is increasing investment in AI and exploring new growth opportunities. The company continues to advance around large model capabilities and AI product matrix: Hunyuan 3.0 will be released in April this year, "Crayfish" series Agents such as WorkBuddy and QClaw will be launched one after another, and the user activity of AI applications such as Yuanbao, ima, QQ browser, and Sogou input method continues to increase.
Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, said: "We have maintained healthy growth in 2025, thanks to AI technology that has improved our advertising targeting capabilities and player interaction in games, as well as the accelerated growth of cloud business revenue and achieved large-scale profitability. Our core business is resilient and generates sufficient cash flow, which provides us with We are increasing investment in AI to provide support, including recruiting top AI talents and upgrading AI infrastructure. The intelligence level of our Hunyuan 3.0 language model continues to improve, and AI products such as Yuanbao, WorkBuddy and QClaw are producing actual results. These encouraging early signs indicate that AI investment will open up new opportunities for us."
Annual R&D investment reached a record high of 85.8 billion yuan
The financial report shows that Tencent Holdings continues to increase investment in AI, with annual capital expenditure reaching 79.2 billion yuan and R&D investment of 85.75 billion yuan, both reaching record highs.
Game revenue will increase by 22% year-on-year in 2025, and game AI applications will become one of the key driving forces
The financial report mentioned that gaming, as Tencent’s core business, has seen steady growth, with full-year gaming business revenue reaching 241.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22%. Among them, the annual revenue of games in the local market increased by 18% year-on-year to 164.2 billion yuan. The annual revenue of games in the international market exceeded the US$10 billion mark, a year-on-year increase of 33%, setting a record high.
Specifically, by the fourth quarter of 2025, game revenue in the local market increased by 15% year-on-year to 38.2 billion yuan, mainly due to the revenue growth of "Operation Delta" and "Fearless Contract" (PC and mobile), as well as the incremental revenue contribution of "Crying Tide"; game revenue in the international market increased by 32% year-on-year, reaching 21.1 billion yuan, mainly from the revenue growth of Supercell's games and "PUBG Mobile", as well as the incremental revenue contribution from "Crying Tide" overseas.
Tencent Game AI is effectively accelerating content production, improving user experience, and increasing marketing efficiency. At present, many of its games such as "Honor of Kings", "Peace Elite" and "Delta Operation" have applied AI to enrich player experience and improve game quality. Among them, "Peace Elite" has announced that the cumulative number of users who have experienced all AI NPC gameplay in the game has reached 110 million, the highest number of daily active users has reached 17.7 million, the number of message interactions in a single game has reached 70 rounds, and the microphone open rate is nearly 75%, further increasing player participation.
The annual user time of video accounts has increased by more than 20%
The financial report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2025, Tencent's marketing services revenue was 41.12 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%, and the growth rate continued to lead the industry.
It is reported that in the social field, Tencent relies on the WeChat ecosystem to promote the implementation of AI capabilities, deploy AI technology in core scenarios such as search and recommendation, and drive the activity of ecological products such as video accounts, mini programs, WeChat stores, and mini games to increase. The financial report shows that the combined number of monthly active users of WeChat and WeChat further increased to 1.418 billion.
Among them, video accounts use long sequence large models to optimize recommendations, and user duration will increase by more than 20% year-on-year in 2025; user duration of mini programs will increase by more than 20% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2025, and the AI mini program growth plan has attracted more than 10,000 developers to access; WeChat mini programs Store brand sales are developing rapidly. In 2025, the scale growth rate will reach 4.3 times the overall growth rate of the platform. The scale of global sales by sellers will more than double year-on-year. The ecology of mini games remains active, with monthly active users of IAP mini games reaching 300 million and monthly active users of IAA mini games reaching 400 million.
