Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings’ first-quarter revenue missed estimates amid a slowdown in gaming sales growth, while the company pledged continued investment in artificial intelligence to fuel its future growth.

First-quarter sales grew 9 per cent to 196.5 billion yuan (US$28.9 billion), following 180 billion yuan during the same period in 2025. It missed estimates of 199.4 billion yuan, according to analysts polled by Bloomberg.

Net income for the March quarter reached 67.9 billion yuan on a non-IFRS basis, largely in line with consensus estimates of 67.8 billion yuan. This represents year-on-year growth of 11 per cent, lagging the 17 per cent seen in the previous quarter.

The revenue miss followed a slowdown in the domestic gaming business that Tencent attributed to a late Chinese New Year in 2026, which resulted in a proportion of the holiday sales recognition shifting to the next quarter.

Video game sales, traditionally the company’s strongest revenue stream, grew 6 per cent domestically and 13 per cent overseas to reach 45.4 billion yuan and 18.8 billion yuan, respectively.

The results came as Tencent, which operates the world’s largest video game publisher by revenue and China’s largest social media network, continues to bet on AI as a major source of future growth with aggressive moves in pushing its applications, agents and foundational models.

“We started 2026 by making significant initial progress on our new AI products, as well as continuing to utilise AI to grow our existing core businesses,” said Tencent co-founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng.