“Investors are not pushing back on AI spending itself, but on the lack of near-term visibility on monetization,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Catherine Lim said. China’s most valuable firm is considered well-positioned to build agentic AI because it sits on a trove of user data, and controls access to a universe of domestic apps via WeChat. “Recent results from Tencent and Alibaba have only added to doubts about the returns and margins from their massive investments,” said Paul Pong, managing director at Pegasus Fund Managers Ltd, who sold Alibaba shares in December last year. On Thursday, it declared a target of US$100 billion of cloud and AI revenue in five years. Over last month’s week-long Lunar New Year holiday, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance Ltd and Baidu Inc gave out billions of yuan in coupons to acquire users for their consumer-facing agentic apps.

Source: The Edge Markets March 20, 2026 04:48 UTC