Tencent Targets Southeast Asia as Launch Pad for Global Rollout of AI Agent WorkBuddy, Announces Visa Partnership
Tencent Cloud CEO Dowson Tong stated that the company is using Southeast Asia to expand its AI tools globally amid intense domestic competition, while accelerating overseas data center expansion.
Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings is using Southeast Asia as a launch pad to take its “cost-effective” artificial intelligence tools global, fronted by its workplace assistant WorkBuddy, amid cutthroat competition at home.
According to Dowson Tong, CEO of Tencent’s Cloud and Smart Industries Group, the company was targeting existing regional customers of its cloud computing and big data services, particularly in markets such as Indonesia. Speaking at an opening speech on Thursday at the company’s annual Global Digital Ecosystem Summit in Shenzhen, Tong noted that the international push coincided with triple-digit growth in overseas demand for Tencent’s AI services over the past year, with global businesses showing “very high interest and demand” for Chinese AI offerings.
To keep pace with demand, Tencent said it was stepping up its overseas infrastructure expansion, having added or expanded data centre capacity across markets including Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Japan and Saudi Arabia. The expansion strengthened Tencent Cloud’s footprint to cover clients from more than 150 countries and regions, Tong said.
Tencent released the international version of WorkBuddy in early July across 21 markets, including Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. Jade Ding, head of overseas business growth for WorkBuddy, said on Wednesday that “the penetration rate of AI agents in everyday life and workplaces is extremely low” in the international market, shedding light on future potential. According to domestic research firm Analysys, WorkBuddy ranked as the most popular desktop workplace AI agent in mainland China in June with nearly 21 million users, leading ByteDance’s Trae IDE and Alibaba Group Holding’s QoderWork.