Tencent’s Cloud Boss Plays Long Game to Patch ‘Leaky’ AI Ship

When Pony Ma called Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s AI endeavor “a leaky ship” this summer, the billionaire founder sent ripples through a company that for years dominated the industry with WeChat. The social media and gaming leader was at the time struggling to catch the likes of DeepSeek in the post-ChatGPT age. One of his key lieutenants, Dowson Tong, came up with a surprising answer: let’s retool to focus on businesses.