AI Disruptor DeepSeek Gains Ground as Tencent and Baidu Adapt to Change

The integration of DeepSeek into Tencent and Baidu’s ecosystems marks a significant shift in China’s AI landscape. By embedding DeepSeek into WeChat and Baidu Search—two of China’s largest digital entry points—the AI model now influences hundreds of millions of users. This development highlights both the competitive and cooperative dynamics between rising AI players and established internet giants.

On one hand, the adoption of DeepSeek reflects the challenges traditional internet giants face in keeping up with advanced AI models.

DeepSeek’s superior performance, cost-efficiency, and usability have outshined many in-house AI efforts, forcing companies like Tencent and Baidu to integrate third-party solutions to stay competitive. On the other hand, these tech giants are strategically leveraging DeepSeek to reinforce their existing ecosystems, transforming external AI capabilities into their own defensive moat.

At its core, this trend underscores the inevitable restructuring of the internet landscape in the AI era. The battle is not merely about AI supremacy but about how established platforms can adapt and maintain dominance by integrating disruptive technologies.

Reshaping Ecosystems in the AI Era

Since the advent of generative AI, a persistent challenge has been the deep contextual integration of AI models into real-world applications. AI’s potential has been constrained by data silos across different platforms, making it difficult to provide truly personalized and contextualized services.

According to an IDC report, 73% of China’s internet industry data is concentrated in the hands of Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and other top platforms.

However, cross-platform data sharing remains an issue, with successful data interconnectivity below 5%. This fragmentation means that user behavior data from e-commerce giants like Taobao and JD.com remains isolated from social media platforms such as Douyin and Weibo.

Similarly, consumer habits on Meituan, video-watching behavior on Douyin, and financial activities on Alipay exist in separate ecosystems, limiting AI’s ability to construct comprehensive user profiles.

Search functions present a similar challenge. While AI models such as Kimi and Zhipu can access online information, most third-party AI models are restricted to public data and cannot access private or proprietary content.