China's Tencent plans to at least double its AI-related spending to 36 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) this year, as the gaming and social media giant invests in model training, talent acquisition and ramps up marketing of its AI agent services.

Executives led by billionaire Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng announced the hike in AI investments during a Wednesday conference call accompanying the company’s latest quarterly result release. The spending doesn’t cover purchases of chips needed to train its AI model.

The company has ample resources to pour into AI. During the final three months of last year, revenues grew 13% year-on-year to 194.4 billion yuan thanks to strong performance from its online games unit. Net profit was up 14% to 58.3 billion yuan from the same period a year ago.

But its Hong Kong-listed shares fell almost 7% Thursday as the company says it might reduce share repurchases this year to allocate more resources to AI. Last........

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