China is losing the LLM race but it can still win in AI, ex-Tencent AI lead says

For years, Liu Wei was synonymous with Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings’ Artificial Intelligence efforts. A distinguished scientist at the Shenzhen-based company, Liu was also head of its Hunyuan team, the firm’s foundational model development unit for the generative AI era.But in late 2024, Liu’s departure from Tencent after more than eight years sparked immediate speculation as to why he left. Hunyuan was introduced only a year earlier – so why did Liu suddenly quit one of China’s most deep-pocketed tech companies so early into the AI boom?Speaking to the China-morning-post" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="12558" data-entity-type="organization">South China Morning Post, the term Liu repeatedly used was fanshi, or “paradigm”. Commonly used among AI researchers, the term refers to a technical breakthrough that defines a new era of AI innovations, notable examples being OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude Code.