Tencent ADR Jumps After Report It’s Set to Launch WeChat AI Agent

Tencent ADR advanced 10.3% in premarket trading on Tuesday after a report it’s testing a prototype AI agent fueled optimism about the company’s artificial intelligence efforts.

The Chinese internet giant plans to begin a compliance process for a public launch of the agent as soon as this month, the Financial Times reported, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the plan. After that, Tencent plans to test the agent on a small group of outside users before initiating a phased rollout, the newspaper said.

Shares of Tencent closed up 10.5% in Hong Kong with turnover at the highest in more than a year.

A successful introduction of an AI agent for the popular WeChat service would mark a step forward for Tencent’s bid to catch up to rivals in the rapidly emerging technology. While Tencent has vowed to at least double investments in the field to more than 36 billion yuan ($5.3 billion) this year, it trails peers like ByteDance Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in both user adoption and advances in developing state-of-the-art large language models.