Bloomberg and staff reporter

Tencent's (0700) shares rose to their highest since 2021 after DeepSeek, the AI service that's shaken up the industry since its emergence this year, debuted on the big tech company's WeChat social media platform.

The shares closed nearly 4 percent higher in Hong Kong yesterday, outperforming the market index's 0.02 percent decline.

Shenzhen-based Tencent is integrating DeepSeek's artificial intelligence model into WeChat search, the company said in a statement.

The internet and games giant joins a wave of government bodies and service providers embracing DeepSeek's software across China. The move helped lift confidence for Tencent's prospects, following strong game releases that helped its shares rise more than 70 percent over the past year.

Four Tencent Cloud products now also offer access to DeepSeek's AI model.

Two cloud-based services - Tencent Cloud AI Code Assistant and Tencent Yuanqi, another AI assistant app - will be completely free to use.

Tencent LearnShare, an enterprise community product, will offer its DeepSeek model-based AI assistant for free, while Tencent Maps will integrate DeepSeek's functions to aid users in more accurately searching for specific locations.

Earlier this month, Tencent Cloud said that the DeepSeek-R1 model can be deployed on its Hyper Application Inventor for AI app development in just three minutes flat.

The investment bank, China International Capital (3908), maintained its "buy" rating for Tencent with a target price of HK$570.

Tencent also embraced DeepSeek in its Cloud products. BLOOMBERG

Tencent shares surge as DeepSeek joins WeChat