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On the evening of March 3, Yuanbao surpassed DeepSeek and ranked first in the Apple China App Store free app download rankings.
A month ago, Yuanbao was considered by the outside world as the "most invisible AI universal application." QuestMobile data shows that in the AI native app rankings last year, Yuanbao's monthly active users ranked 11th, while similar Doubao, Kimi, and Wen Xinyiyan accounted for the top three respectively.
Yuanbao's "low-key" has something to do with its late launch. It is the last TO C application among major manufacturers to enter the market, but the more important reason is that Tencent seems to have not invested enough resources in Yuanbao before.
In May 2024, Yuanbao App was launched and the web version was not launched until March this year. Last year, Doubao and Kimi competed fiercely in marketing, and Yuanbao was even slow to participate.
Until this year, after Yuanbao was connected to DeepSeek, the situation reversed.
The advertisements for "download ingots" have appeared in major applications under Tencent, and even the always "stingy" WeChat nine-cup grid has given ingots a place. In addition to promoting it on its own platform, Yuanbao has also invested a lot of advertising on external platforms such as Weibo, B station, and Douyin.
In just over half a month, Yuanbao has made 7 updates, including major changes such as access to DeepSeek, launching self-developed deep thinking model Hunyuan T1, Kuaishou Model Hunyuan Turbo S, and other major changes, as well as adding one-click export of long dialogue images, and launching the computer version.
In this way, Yuanbao was killed.
In the long run, whether the current traffic can be converted into user retention will be the key to determining Yuanbao's future fate, otherwise it may repeat Kimi's mistakes and only temporarily occupy the top spot.
Where can you win if you reach the top?At present, the outside world's questions about Yuanbao are mainly concentrated. Is it leaping from "little transparent" to become the first, right? Is it relying on strength or marketing? Is there any moisture in this number one?
Let’s look at Yuanbao’s model capabilities first.
More than one practitioner said that the dual-model strategy (connecting to external DeepSeek and self-developed Hunyuan big model) is Yuanbao's biggest advantage. The two popular AI general-purpose applications in China - Kimi and Doubao, currently only have built-in self-developed big models.
Tencent's self-developed Hunyuan model (Hunyuan T1/Turbo S) is the exclusive of Yuanbao. These two models have been launched intensively recently. Hunyuan T1 was launched on February 17 this year, and Turbo S was ten days behind it.
Because of itWe all belong to the closed-source model and do not have an authoritative ranking. We mainly evaluate them based on the practitioner's experience of use and public papers. Hunyuan T1 focuses on in-depth thinking, similar to DeepSeek-R1, but Jiang Shu, a senior practitioner in the AI industry, believes that its reasoning ability is not much different from other domestic companies.
A well-known expert in the field of big models also believes that judging from the time of the model being launched and related paper reports, DeepSeek and Kimi are relatively strong in domestic inference models, while Hunyuan T1 is slightly weaker in comparison.
Turbo S belongs to the Quick Thinking model, focusing on speed, can achieve "second return" and reduce the delay of the first character by 44% is the highlight.
However, practitioners believe that the current market focus is on the deep reasoning ability of big models, and Kuaishou seems to be "out of date". After all, Alibaba Qwen series models, Wen Xinyiyan, Doubao, DeepSeek until the V3 version, and the GPT series models before the o1 series are Kuaishou.
They prefer to believe that Yuanbao is on the top of the download list, and the main player is DeepSeek. Many users only download Yuanbao in order to try DeepSeek.
Photo source / Screenshot of App Store APP
Let’s look at investing in traffic again.
Yuanbao's investment flow is very radical. On the one hand, it relies on internal ecology (Tencent Advertising) and on the other hand, it relies on external channels (Tik Tok, Kuaishou, etc.). AppGrowing data shows that Yuanbao's estimated investment amount in February exceeded 300 million.
AI software engineer Qin Xiang said that Yuanbao adopts a strategy of spreading wide nets and precise access. External channels such as Weibo, B station, and Douyin are mainly to expand user coverage. The most important thing is to utilize internal ecosystems (full coverage of Tencent-based apps such as WeChat search and traffic diversion, WeChat Moments advertising, QQ browser, etc.). After all, these channels have high user trust and strong scene relevance, and extremely high reach efficiency.
Xiao A, who is engaged in the launch of search tools, also told "Dingjutsu One" that the current mainstream channel for AI search is Tencent Advertising.
AppGrowing data shows that among AI general-purpose applications (yuanbao, Doubao, Kimi, Tongyi, Wenxin Yiyan), Tencent Advertising (WeChat, QQ, Tencent News, Tencent Video, QQ Browser), accounting for the largest proportion of the total investment channels.
This time, WeChat, as the ace channel, provides Yuanbao with strong traffic support. The link to download Yuanbao (experience DeepSeek-R1) is displayed in the search. The link to download Yuanbao is displayed; the information flow advertisements in the circle of friends, the bottom of the official account article, and the mini-program screen opening page are all pushed; and there is also the embedding of the WeChat nine-grid entrance.
In addition, Yuanbao emphasized in its promotion that its online search function opened up the WeChat public account content library, which can retrieve more than 210 million historical articles in real time, and can include 1.8 million new tweets that are added per day in 15 minutes. Xiao A thinks this move is a fightThe difference between Yuanbao and other AI applications can attract some users.
It is not difficult to find that advertising has played a key role in Yuanbao's reaching the top, and the traffic support of Tencent ecosystem is an important cornerstone of its success.
The timing is also important as the rise of ingotsIn the field of AI application, advertising has become an industry consensus. Previously, Kimi and Doubao seized a lot of markets by investing in the flow.
In particular, Kimi, an application launched by a startup, relied on its own technological advantages and heavy investment, broke through the siege among a number of major manufacturers last year.
Practitioners believe that investment flow is particularly effective in the field of AI application because the threshold for AI application experience is not high, and users do not have too strong loyalty, so it is easy to convert quickly through traffic.
Jiang Shu said that the current big model is still not very practical, and the TO C application created attracts most users who try it out. After use, they often give up quickly because the product is not as smart as expected (not smart, not interesting, and not solving problems, etc.).
This user behavior pattern is precisely why investment flow can play a key role. Finding the right time to enter the flow can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
The timing of the incoming ingot is very clever. After DeepSeek educated the market and users' awareness of AI significantly increased, the delivery effect was much better than when the outside world had low awareness of AI last year.
Jiang Shu believes that the popularity of DeepSeek is characterized by breaking the circle and becoming a national trend, indicating that the public's understanding of the application of AI models has been formed. Yuanbao has taken over DeepSeek users with its frequent and busy conditions in the DeepSeek-R1 official website, and further expanded its user coverage through investment flow.
Tencent also has unique advantages in investment flow, that is, with the support of the Tencent ecosystem, it will burn more accurately.
Photo source / WeChat Moments Screenshot
Just judging from the investment amount of nearly 300 million yuan in February, Tencent’s investment speed, intensity and scale this time are far beyond the previous Doubao and Kimi.
This strategy is also in line with Tencent’s usual product ideas: not blindly act in the early stage of the market, but wait for the market to gradually mature and have successful cases to verify, and then find the right time to take action decisively. Its core strategy is to quickly occupy the market through large-scale investment and mobilize Tencent-based applications to cooperate in combat.
For example, Tencent has also adopted a similar strategy when making a party game, Yuanmeng Star. A year after NetEase's "Egg Party" became popular, Tencent launched the similar game "Yuan Mengxing". It not only adopted innovative gameplay, but also invested large-scale advertising on platforms such as WeChat, QQ, Douyin, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, etc., as well as cash strategies such as "10 billion subsidies" to attract players to download, and announced that it would invest 1.4 billion in the first phase to make a game ecological incentive plan. This moveThe peak of game downloads and estimated revenue was quickly smashed, but this state lasted for less than a month.
Due to the unclear business prospects of the general AI model, Yuanbao has remained low-key since its launch last year and is a defensive business of Tencent. It was not until I connected to DeepSeek that I started to invest heavily.
Why did Tencent choose to add gold ingots at this point in time?
In line with the view of practitioners, Tencent Hunyuan big model appeared late, and its model capabilities did not reach the level of being able to completely crush its competitors, and TO C applications did not have the first-mover advantage. For example, Kimi launched the market as early as October 2023, and Yuanbao was released at the end of May 2024.
When capabilities and time do not have the first-mover advantage, Tencent will not easily invest a lot of traffic in Yuanbao, but DeepSeek's open source has tied up the technical gap between various large models, and the competition for TO C applications has also been pulled to the same level. This is a good opportunity for Yuanbao to take action.
In the early and mid-term investment periods, Yuanbao also made technical preparations.
Qin Xiang said that DeepSeek-R1 provides Yuanbao with deep reasoning capabilities, supports multimodal (such as picture analysis), and enhances practical scenario coverage. TurboS, as a self-developed quick thinking model, is benchmarking DeepSeekV3 in Benchmark performance such as knowledge and mathematics. This also makes the dual-model ingot significantly improve, both in terms of response speed and multi-modal capabilities (image understanding and file analysis), making it easier for users to use.
Can Yuanbao retain users?Although Yuanbao briefly reached the top, the challenges it faces cannot be ignored. What the market is most worried about is whether Yuanbao will repeat Kimi’s mistakes, and the user retention rate will be low after the high investment advertising traffic ends.
Kimi, as one of the most successful C-end AI applications in 2024, has always been controversial about "money-burning marketing" changing users.
AppGrowing data shows that since March 2024, Kimi's advertising has reached tens of millions of yuan almost every month, and it is estimated to exceed 900 million yuan last year. Because of "burning 100 million in 20 days", Kimi once became a hot search.
However, even so, Kimi's market position has not been maintained for a long time, and DeepSeek quickly replaced its popularity after its emergence.
QuestMobile data shows that from January 20 to January 26 (DeepSeek's hot period), Kimi's weekly active users grew by less than 28% month-on-month, while DeepSeek's weekly active users grew by more than 750% month-on-month during the same period.
The phenomenon of high marketing and low retention is not an isolated case.
The bean bag that dominated the number one downloads in major AI applications in China has also relied onLarge-scale advertising has enabled latecomers to come from behind. AppGrowing data shows that the cumulative investment of bean bread exceeded 475 million yuan in 2024, but now most of the popularity has been taken away by DeepSeek.
Photo source / Screenshot of App Store APP
In September last year, some practitioners counted that the user retention rate of large-scale model applications (Doubao, Kimi, Wen Xiaoyan, iFLYTEK, and Yuanbao) after 30 days of downloading were less than 1%.
Liu Cong, a well-known expert in the field of big models, pointed out that the user stickiness of big models in the market is not high, and only a few professional practitioners will insist on using it every day. Most ordinary users are trying it out and try to download it after seeing the promotion. Once there is a new and popular application, they will "turn around and run away."
Qin Xiang also said that the current matching between large model applications and user needs is insufficient, and most AI applications have single functions (such as only supporting Q&A), which cannot continuously meet the complex needs of users, the quality of generated content is unstable, and there is a lack of personalization (such as insufficient adaptation of vertical scenarios such as finance and education).
The current momentum of Yuanbao has been connected to the top-level big model DeepsSeek, but this problem has not been solved. Jiang Shu believes that the development of AI in China is still in its early stages, "even basic obedience, stability, and unlimited requirements."
In short, Yuanbao's top is more like the result of technology, traffic and ecology coordination, rather than relying solely on technological advantages.
And it is only the first step to reach the top. With more users, it will attract more attention. Recently, Yuanbao was accused of the user agreement containing "unfair terms" and caused controversy.
The clause states that the content uploaded by the user to the platform will grant Tencent and its affiliates an irrevocable, permanent, free and unregulated license right to use, covering storage, use, copying, editing, publishing and other activities, and can be used for model optimization, academic research and marketing purposes.
In this regard, Tencent has publicly apologized, saying that the latest version of Yuanbao has added data management functions, added a new experience optimization switch, and is turned off by default, and the input and output content will not be used for model optimization.
Qin Xiang pointed out that at this moment, Yuanbao not only needs to be further upgraded in technology, but also needs to find a balance between technical depth and user value. Only in this way can we avoid falling into the trap of "burning money for growth".
How long can the high level with the highest download volume last for a lot of money to spend? Everyone is waiting and watching.