Four Shenzhen-based corporate giants, each with a market presence valued in the trillions—Huawei, BYD Company Limited, TENCENT, and PING AN, collectively referred to as "Shenzhen's Four Innovation Giants"—have released their annual reports. Hailing from diverse sectors including hard technology, new energy manufacturing, internet services, and comprehensive finance, these companies face varying industry cycles and market conditions. Nevertheless, all four have unanimously identified technological innovation, artificial intelligence, and global expansion as their core strategies for navigating economic cycles. Common themes in their 2025 performance include mixed financial results, increased R&D spending, AI-driven growth, and accelerated international expansion, though the underlying rationales differ significantly.

In 2025, these leading enterprises demonstrated the resilience of China's core assets while reflecting the genuine realities of different industries undergoing transformation and upgrading. As of the Hong Kong market close on April 15, BYD COMPANY (1211.HK) settled at HK$107.3 per share, marking a year-to-date increase of 12.53%; TENCENT (0700.HK) closed at HK$499 per share, down 16.69% for the year; and PING AN (2318.HK) ended at HK$62.55 per share, declining 3.99% year-to-date.

Performance divergence is evident: three companies showed stable growth, while BYD experienced "revenue growth without profit growth." Overall, the four firms maintained an expansion in revenue for 2025, with each surpassing annual revenues of 750 billion yuan. PING AN recorded the highest revenue, exceeding one trillion yuan, while TENCENT achieved the fastest growth rate at 14%. However, profitability levels varied markedly. Huawei, TENCENT, and PING AN all reported year-on-year growth in both revenue and net profit, with TENCENT posting the highest attributable net profit. In contrast, BYD faced a situation of "increasing revenue without increasing profit," impacted by intense industry competition and high R&D expenditures.

Examining each company's performance individually, TENCENT demonstrated the strongest growth momentum among the four in terms of revenue scale, absolute net profit, and growth rate. The year 2025 marked a period of "high-quality growth" for TENCENT: annual revenue reached 751.766 billion yuan, up 14%; net profit attributable to owners rose 16% to 224.842 billion yuan; and gross profit margin climbed to a record high of 56%. TENCENT attributed its profit improvement to enhanced ad targeting capabilities driven by AI technology, strong performance from new games like "Delta Action," and the achievement of scaled profitability for Tencent Cloud.

PING AN also delivered a robust performance. Benefiting from a cyclical recovery in the insurance industry, ongoing risk resolution, and life insurance reforms, PING AN's core financial indicators all showed positive growth in 2025. Annual revenue increased 2.1% to 1,050.506 billion yuan, while operating profit grew 10.3%, adjusted net profit surged 22.5%, and net assets surpassed one trillion yuan for the first time, making it the first insurer to reach this milestone. Notably, while its core business maintained strong growth, PING AN's asset management business reduced losses by 70%, and its financial empowerment segment (formerly the technology segment) turned a profit. This "lighter operational load" allows PING AN to allocate more resources to its main businesses and explore new growth avenues.

Operating in a persistently challenging external environment, Huawei exhibited a "V-shaped recovery." Comparing its performance over the past six years, last year's revenue of 880.9 billion yuan was second only to the 891.4 billion yuan achieved in 2020; net profit grew 8.6% to 68 billion yuan. This steady recovery was driven by both its foundational and emerging businesses. The ICT infrastructure business, serving as a "ballast," remained stable with revenue of 375.014 billion yuan, up 2.6%, accounting for approximately 43% of total revenue. Huawei's other pillar, the consumer business, also grew, with revenue increasing 1.6% to 344.473 billion yuan, representing 39% of total revenue. Within this segment, smartphone market share in China returned to the top position, and smart vehicle-related businesses like Harmony Intelligent Driving experienced rapid volume growth; other business units also contributed incremental gains.

In contrast to the first three companies, BYD operates in the highly competitive new energy vehicle industry. While its scale reached new heights, it faced pressure from declining profitability. BYD's 2025 revenue grew 3.46% to approximately 804 billion yuan, with annual vehicle sales exceeding 4.6 million units, marking its first entry into the global top five automaker groups by sales volume. However, net profit attributable to owners fell nearly 19% year-on-year, the first profit decline in three years. The core reasons for the profit decrease were twofold. Firstly, an intensifying price war in the domestic auto market, coupled with raw material price fluctuations, led to a significant drop in per-vehicle profit and a contraction in the automotive business gross margin, which fell to 20.49% in 2025. Secondly, BYD's R&D expense ratio reached 91.4% for the year, meaning the vast majority of R&D investment was expensed immediately rather than capitalized, avoiding future heavy amortization costs.

In the race for AI dominance, heavy investment is a consensus, but implementation paths vary. Confronting the industrial transformation brought by artificial intelligence, all four companies have chosen to increase R&D investment, viewing AI as a future core competency. Except for PING AN, which did not disclose the figure, the other three companies each invested over 60 billion yuan in R&D last year, with Huawei's investment being the highest at approximately 200 billion yuan. However, due to differences in their primary business scenarios, their AI strategies follow distinct implementation paths: Huawei focuses on underlying computing power and technology ecosystems, TENCENT concentrates on C/B-end applications and creating closed-loop ecosystems, BYD deepens its efforts in manufacturing and automotive intelligence, and PING AN bases its strategy on re-engineering financial service processes.

Among the four, Huawei had the highest R&D expenditure in 2025, reaching 192.3 billion yuan, accounting for over 20% of its annual revenue. Its cumulative R&D investment over the past decade exceeds 1,382 billion yuan. Huawei believes AI "will be the biggest development opportunity in the next decade, or even longer." Huawei's AI strategy is not limited to single products but is comprehensively integrated across its entire business chain—communications, consumer devices, digital power, and smart vehicles—using technology as a foundation for long-term growth. Currently, Huawei's Ascend 384 super-node clusters serve industries like internet, finance, telecommunications, and power, solidifying its computing power base. The Kunpeng and Ascend ecosystems are developing steadily, boasting 3.8 million Kunpeng developers and 4 million Ascend developers. The Kunpeng Application Enablement Kit BoostKit, Ascend CANN, and Mind series software are fully open-source, supporting users in deeply leveraging Kunpeng and Ascend computing capabilities.

TENCENT also maintained high-intensity R&D spending, with annual expenditure of 85.747 billion yuan, a 21% increase. AI is already driving growth in TENCENT's core businesses. Furthermore, its Hunyuan 3.0 large language model continues to improve in intelligence, and AI products like Yuanbao, WorkBuddy, and QClaw are beginning to yield practical benefits. "TENCENT invested approximately 18 billion yuan in new AI products last year, and this budget is expected to at least double in 2026," publicly stated TENCENT President Martin Lau.

In the automotive sector, AI empowerment has transcended the single scenario of autonomous driving, permeating the entire industry chain including R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, services, and energy management, becoming a key factor determining future competitiveness, efficiency boundaries, and value creation capabilities. In its 2025 annual report, BYD clearly identified electrification and intelligentization as breakthrough points, promoting the transformation of vehicles from mere transportation tools to mobile intelligent terminals. Its R&D investment reached 63.4 billion yuan in 2025, growing 7.4%. This high investment has led to the continuous rollout of technological achievements. In early March 2026, BYD launched its second-generation Blade Battery and flash-charging technology, solving the challenges of "slow charging" and "difficult charging in low temperatures" from the first half of electrification. Its TianShenZhiYan advanced driver-assistance system and fifth-generation DM technology are also being continuously optimized.

PING AN utilizes AI technology as a tool to empower its core businesses in finance and healthcare. In 2025, over 230,000 PING AN employees used an internal intelligent agent platform to develop more than 70,000 agent applications, with annual model calls reaching 3.65 billion. PING AN also launched AI products such as digital replicas of famous doctors, AI family doctors, and AI elderly care managers. A combination of "AI + real" doctors now serves 100% of the group's individual customers, and the cost per consultation in the fourth quarter decreased by 45% year-on-year. Recently, PING AN's CTO Wang Xiaohang indicated that the company aims to use an AI "quick service" portal, allowing customers to access financial, medical, health, and lifestyle services with a single command.

Clearly, maintaining high R&D investment and implementing AI strategies are common choices for these four industry leaders, forming the foundation of their confidence in facing industry competition and navigating economic cycles.

Globalization is accelerating, but the logic and models differ significantly. Increasingly fierce domestic competition and gradually maturing growth prospects have prompted all four companies to view globalization as an important growth vector. However, constrained by differing industry attributes, their overseas expansion models, pacing, and profit contributions show substantial variation.

For BYD, international expansion is a crucial lever to hedge against the highly competitive domestic market and a vital new engine for growth. BYD adopts an industrial出海 model involving "self-built factories and self-controlled channels." In 2025, BYD's overseas revenue reached 310.7 billion yuan, a surge of 40.05%, accounting for 38.65% of total revenue. To support global expansion, BYD is accelerating factory construction in locations like Hungary, Thailand, and Brazil, building its own transport fleet to ensure global delivery, and raising its overseas sales targets. Against the backdrop of stock competition in the domestic market, going global has become a key strategy for BYD to break through profitability bottlenecks and unlock long-term growth space.

Differing from BYD, TENCENT employs a relatively "asset-light" model for出海, focusing on content, technology, and services. For instance, revenue from TENCENT's international games business soared 33% year-on-year to 77.4 billion yuan in 2025, breaking the US$10 billion mark. Tencent Cloud deeply serves Chinese companies expanding overseas while gradually introducing its large AI models and digital solutions to international markets.

Huawei's global expansion centers on technology export, standard setting, and ecosystem collaboration. Currently, Huawei operates in over 170 countries and regions worldwide. It relies on ICT infrastructure as its "foundational business" while promoting the overseas growth of its consumer, digital power, and smart vehicle solution businesses. By opening up its HarmonyOS, Kunpeng, and Ascend ecosystems, Huawei collaborates with global partners to build industrial ecosystems. Facing a persistently volatile and complex external environment, Huawei's annual report also emphasizes that the company "adheres to a global development strategy and actively responds to public consultations and discussions on policies, regulations, and standards in the countries where it operates."

PING AN's globalization strategy is closely tied to its core operations. For example, leveraging its insurance funds exceeding one trillion yuan, PING AN allocates capital to high-quality global assets within policy limits to enhance investment returns. Simultaneously, its subsidiaries provide customers with global emergency rescue and cross-border settlement services.

In 2025, Huawei, BYD Company Limited, TENCENT, and PING AN—Shenzhen's Four Innovation Giants—have charted distinct paths across the three main themes of financial performance, technology/AI strategy, and globalization: Huawei achieved a steady recovery through technological resilience, BYD maintained long-term investment amidst intense industry competition, TENCENT embarked on high-quality growth powered by AI, and PING AN sustained growth following life insurance reforms and gradual risk resolution. Their performances, amid a complex market environment, also reflect aspects of China's economic development.