Company perspectives
Tencent maintains its top ranking in the 2025 CCTI, setting the benchmark in Early Innovation Results (first), Business Diversity (first), and R&D Efforts (second). As one of the world’s most influential technology conglomerates, Tencent continues to dominate social media, gaming, cloud computing, fintech, and AI-driven enterprise solutions. With a highly diversified portfolio and strategic investments in next-generation technologies, Tencent is not just shaping China’s technological ecosystem, it is driving global digital transformation.
Tencent’s business is on a strong recovery path, with WeChat live-streaming commercialization, mini-games, AI technology, and cloud expansion emerging as key growth drivers. After navigating regulatory and market challenges in 2022, the company rebounded in 2023 with a significant profit surge and strategic refocusing. Its Cloud & Smart Industries Group has become a foundational pillar, providing critical support across Tencent’s ecosystem and driving synergies between AI, enterprise services, and digital transformation.
Tencent’s RMB 64bn R&D investment in 2023, up from RMB 61.4bn the previous year, is the foundation of its leadership in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and gaming innovation. A key driver of Tencent’s AI strategy is its proprietary large language model Hunyuan By May 2024, it had already been piloted across more than 600 internal business units and application scenarios, optimizing gaming, fintech, advertising, and enterprise AI solutions, creating an AI-driven ecosystem that enhances both product differentiation and the potential for long-term monetization.
Baidu’s R&D investments helped it secure the second spot behind Tencent as it climbed from fifth in 2024. This boost was driven by its leadership in AI-driven solutions, expansion in autonomous driving, and continued advancements in cloud-based AI services, and contributed to its success in the 2025 CCTI.
Xiaomi surged 10 places to fifth in 2025 as a result of its leadership in smartphones, successful expansion into electric vehicles (EVs), and development of the world’s largest AI-powered Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Xiaomi’s high Business Diversity ranking (seventh) reflects its ability to leverage core technological expertise to scale into high-growth sectors. The launch of its SU7 electric vehicle in March 2024 marked a bold entry into the high-growth new energy vehicles (NEV) market. By Q3 2024, Xiaomi’s electric vehicles (EV) business had already generated RMB 9.7bn in revenue and an impressive gross profit margin of 17.1%.
At the core of Xiaomi’s evolution is its relentless focus on R&D, which secured a fourth ranking in R&D Efforts. In 2023 alone, Xiaomi invested RMB 19.1bn in R&D, a 19.2% year-on-year increase, with more than 53% of its workforce – or 17,800 employees – dedicated to expanding Xiaomi’s position in AI, IoT, and smart hardware development.
iFlytek remains China’s leading AI and speech technology company, ranking tenth in 2025 CCTI with notable strengths in Early Innovation Results (sixth), Business Diversity (16th), and R&D Efforts (15th). Specializing in voice recognition, speech synthesis, and natural language processing (NLP), iFlytek has expanded AI applications across education, healthcare, and enterprise automation, positioning itself as a key player in China’s AI-driven digital transformation.
DeepSeek’s global debut makes waves with its international-local AI approach
DeepSeek emerged on the global AI scene in early 2024 with DeepSeek Coder, followed by their general-purpose LLM series. DeepSeek was not assessed for the 2025 CCTI.
Founded in 2023, the Hangzhou-based company competes with both Chinese and global AI organizations.
DeepSeek offered several advantages – some tailored to the Chinese market – over competitors like ChatGPT:
- Superior coding capabilities optimized for developers
- Bilingual optimization for both Chinese and English
- Open-source availability of several models
- Competitive pricing compared to Western alternatives
As of February 5, 2025, the DeepSeek AI app has been downloaded more than 21.66 million times worldwide across Google Play and App Store.
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