Tencent's AI workbench, WorkBuddy, has officially launched its open ecosystem platform, showcasing a lineup of over a hundred partners and signaling its ambition to dominate the Agent sector. Jefferies' latest research report identifies Harness as the "jewel in the crown" for Tencent, highlighting its emerging flywheel effect and substantial monetization potential. The firm maintains a Buy rating on Tencent Holdings (HKEX: 00700) with a target price of HKD 750, implying roughly 70% upside from current levels.

The WorkBuddy platform recently went live, onboarding over a hundred ecosystem partners in its inaugural batch, spanning three tiers: smart hardware, industry applications, and developers. This makes it the first open platform in the domestic AI Agent space to integrate these three ecosystem layers simultaneously. On September 2nd, Liu Yi, Tencent Cloud Vice President and Head of CodeBuddy and WorkBuddy, stated, "We aim to build WorkBuddy into the operating system for the Agent era—not just a more powerful tool, but a platform capable of hosting all tools."

In a subsequent research note, Jefferies pointed out that Tencent explicitly positioned Harness as a core strategic asset during a recent institutional investor meeting, emphasizing its commitment to strengthening its leadership position. Analysts Thomas Chong and Zoey Zong believe that WorkBuddy holds significant advantages across multiple dimensions, including total addressable market, skill ecosystem density, and model collaboration efficiency, and that its current valuation does not fully reflect its long-term potential.

Ecosystem Strategy: Comprehensive Integration Across Three Tiers

Since its launch in March, WorkBuddy has undergone more than 50 iterative upgrades, and this ecosystem initiative marks the substantive implementation of its platform strategy.

At the industry application level, WorkBuddy has established partnerships with over 20 professional sectors, covering finance, SaaS, legal, medical, education, public welfare, and design. It also integrates with enterprise systems like CRM and OA, as well as productivity tools such as Meitu. The Jefferies report notes that industry know-how is a key differentiator for the WorkBuddy platform, with its agent runtime acting as the execution engine, incorporating expert capabilities, skill modules, connection interfaces, and application scenarios.

In the hardware sector, WorkBuddy has forged collaborations with more than 30 hardware brands, spanning smart glasses, robots, microphones, and recording devices, facilitated by cloud-based capabilities for seamless cross-device access. The report underscores the critical role of large models in long-horizon tasks, with the cloud architecture providing the foundational support for multi-device coordination.

Harness: A Core Asset Driven by the Flywheel Effect

The Jefferies report identifies Harness as Tencent's most strategically valuable asset at present, outlining several positive catalysts.

Significant scale advantages: WorkBuddy has amassed over 70,000 skills on Harness, far surpassing competitors' 5,000 to 10,000, creating a formidable ecosystem moat. Concurrently, WorkBuddy supports multiple model families rather than being tied to a single AI lab's model team, offering differential advantages in model flexibility.

Emerging flywheel effect: The report points out that with sustained growth in user numbers and skill counts, Harness is forming a positive flywheel. Post-training feedback loops from user interactions can feed back into model optimization, enhancing the product experience and attracting more users and developers.

Clear monetization path: Jefferies indicates that Harness' current gross margins are comparable to those of the GPU leasing business. However, as free users convert to paying subscribers, gross margins have substantial room for improvement. Tencent has established a comprehensive KPI framework, including DAU, revenue per DAU, and token consumption per DAU, demonstrating a refined approach to managing Harness' commercialization progress.

Additionally, WorkBuddy employs its proprietary Hy3 Production model as the default for users, creating internal cost-efficiency synergies that further solidify Harness' competitive moat.