China's AI Giants: Tencent Hunyuan & ByteDance Doubao — AI University Update
I've added Tencent Hunyuan and ByteDance Doubao to the AI University in my app, bringing the total provider count to 74 companies. With Baidu already registered, China's "BAT" trio is now complete.
Tencent Hunyuan — Open Source Multimodal Powerhouse
Tencent's AI brand stands out by releasing world-class open-source models across ALL modalities: text, image, video, and 3D.
| Model | Scale | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Hunyuan-Large | 389B MoE (52B active) | Largest OSS MoE at release / 256K context |
| Hunyuan Image 3.0 | 80B | World's largest OSS image generation model |
| HunyuanVideo | 13B+ | Largest OSS video generation model |
| Hunyuan 3D 2.0 | — | Single image → 3D mesh |
| Hunyuan Compact | 0.5B–7B | 4 variants for edge/device deployment |
Why it matters
Most AI companies specialize in one modality. Tencent offers competitive open-source models in text, image, video, AND 3D from a single organization — backed by production experience from WeChat and QQ.
# Tencent Cloud SDK
from tencentcloud.hunyuan.v20230901 import hunyuan_client, models
req = models.ChatCompletionsRequest()
req.Model = "hunyuan-turbo" # Fast + cost-effective
req.Messages = [{"Role": "user", "Content": "Write a Deno Edge Function"}]
ByteDance Doubao — The "Agent Era" Model
TikTok's parent company ByteDance launched Doubao 2.0 in February 2026 with an explicit "Agent Era" focus — multi-step autonomous task execution.
| Model | Highlight |
|---|---|
| Seed 2.0 Pro | Highest accuracy, long context |
| Seed 2.0 Lite | Lightweight, fast |
| Seed 2.0 Mini | Minimal edge model |
| Seed 2.0 Code | Code-specialized |
| Seedance 2.0 | TikTok-integrated video generation |
Price competitiveness
Doubao API is reportedly 3.7x cheaper than GPT-5.2 — significant for high-volume batch processing.
// Doubao in a Supabase Edge Function
const response = await fetch('https://ark.cn-beijing.volces.com/api/v3/chat/completions', {
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Authorization': `Bearer ${Deno.env.get('DOUBAO_API_KEY')}`,
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
},
body: JSON.stringify({
model: 'doubao-seed-1-6-250615',
messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Hello!' }],
}),
});
AI University: 74 Providers Across All Categories
China AI (4 providers — now complete):
baidu → ERNIE Bot ✅ existing
tencent → Hunyuan ✅ new (73rd)
bytedance → Doubao ✅ new (74th)
deepseek → DeepSeek V3/R1 ✅ existing
The full 74-provider catalog covers LLM giants, image/video generation, AI infrastructure, code models, and specialized AI tools — all free to explore in the app.
Key Takeaways
- Tencent Hunyuan: Best-in-class OSS coverage across all modalities. If you need a free, large-scale model for text, image, or video, Hunyuan is worth evaluating.
- ByteDance Doubao: Agent-focused design + lowest-tier API pricing. Strong candidate for high-volume automation pipelines.
Try AI University (74 providers, free): https://my-web-app-b67f4.web.app/