According to reports citing informed sources, former OpenAI researcher Tian Yonglong has recently joined the Large Language Model Department of TENCENT (00700). He is expected to primarily participate in the research and development work related to Visual Language Models (VLMs). This marks another instance of the Chinese tech giant poaching top technical talent from the leading U.S. AI firm, following its high-profile recruitment of OpenAI core member Yao Shunyu last year.

In December 2025, Tencent announced a restructuring of its large model R&D framework, establishing new departments for AI Infrastructure, AI Data, and Data Computing Platform. It appointed former OpenAI senior researcher Yao Shunyu as the Chief AI Scientist in the "CEO/President's Office," while also making him the head of both the AI Infrastructure Department and the Large Language Model Department.

Tian Yonglong's core research areas at OpenAI reportedly included computer vision, visual representation learning, and generative models. Prior to OpenAI, he joined Google Research in Cambridge as a Senior Research Scientist in late 2022, before transferring to Google DeepMind in May 2024.

The reports indicate that Tian Yonglong and Yao Shunyu are not only alumni of Tsinghua University but also served in research roles at OpenAI during overlapping periods. Yao Shunyu's team launched the new "Hunyuan Hy3 preview" foundation model in April this year, which surpassed 3.66 trillion token calls in its first week. On July 6, the official Hy3 model was released, building on the preview version with improvements in post-training data quality and diversity, expanded reinforcement learning computing scale, and significant progress in tasks like reasoning, intelligent agents, and long-context handling.

Concurrently, Tencent has been deeply integrating its model technology with core business operations, implementing applications such as the WorkBuddy AI agent for all users, game AI generation tools, and a multimodal creative generation system for advertising.

Besides Yao Shunyu and Tian Yonglong, former SeaAI Chief Research Scientist Pang Tianyu also joined Tencent's Hunyuan team in February this year as Chief Research Scientist, responsible for large model training optimization.

To further build its talent pipeline, Tencent is currently actively promoting its "Qingyun Plan," aimed at recruiting top graduates globally in the fields of large models and foundational infrastructure.