Tencent launches Buddy One, an AI-powered office suite with cloud storage, and steps up its global competition for intelligent agents
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On Friday (30), Tencent, the owner of WeChat, unveiled Buddy One in Shenzhen—a suite of office tools that places an AI agent, WorkBuddy, at the heart of operations. The system enables users to request the agent to create reports, assemble presentations, and analyze data without opening multiple applications. The announcement was made by Dowson Tong, Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Cloud and Industries, during the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit.
Launched in March, WorkBuddy functions as a virtual assistant that performs tasks on a computer, such as research, spreadsheet cross-referencing, and document generation. It connects to Tencent Docs (a text editor), Tencent Meeting (a video conferencing system), the Ima knowledge base, and the Yuanbao search chatbot, all through a single account. The new cloud storage service, Tencent Drive, stores the context accumulated by the AI and the files produced, ensuring that this data becomes a company asset.
Integration with corporate systems
Tencent designed WorkBuddy to communicate directly with existing corporate management systems, such as ERP and CRM, offered by vendors like SAP, Salesforce, and TOTVS. The connection is made through the open MCP standard, developed by Anthropic, which allows the agent to access databases and execute actions without requiring the company to migrate information.
With this integration, the agent can, for example, organize a batch of invoices and send all reimbursement requests at once, or check sales targets, customer status, and payment progress from a single request. At Tencent Cloud, an internal agent called Xiaoou already performs these tasks, eliminating the need for manual access to spreadsheets.
Growth in China and global competition
WorkBuddy is already present in over 50 sectors and is used by 50% of China’s 500 largest companies and 60% of its 100 largest companies. The platform has over 50,000 partners and developers and offers more than 200,000 skills. One example of its application is Yili, China’s largest dairy manufacturer, which uses the agent to transform sales data into strategies distributed to a thousand promoters, achieving efficiency gains of over 50% and a 26% increase in orders in A/B tests.
In China, the agent competes with solutions such as Alibaba’s DingTalk and ByteDance’s Feishu. Abroad, its rivals are Microsoft’s Copilot and Google Workspace’s Gemini. Tencent also faces competitors like OpenAI, which launched the Frontier platform for creating agents in February, and Anthropic, which allows Claude to execute tasks autonomously.
New AI models: Hy4 and Hy4 Flash
Tong announced that the final version of Hy4, the new generation of the Hunyuan model, will be released soon. The test version, with 770 billion parameters, has been available since August and costs $0.834 per million input tokens. The final model includes improvements in long tasks, greater efficiency in token usage, and the ability to understand images. Hy4 Flash, a cheaper option, will be released next, but the company has not yet disclosed dates or prices.
Security and risks
Tencent acknowledges that the same technology that speeds up work can also be used for attacks. The company has observed an increase in corporate credential thefts and warns that malicious instructions hidden in documents can be executed by agents. To mitigate these risks, WorkBuddy identifies and removes suspicious commands, blocks high-risk operations, and requires user confirmation for dubious actions. All agent actions are recorded, and data is encrypted end-to-end.
International expansion and presence in Brazil
Tencent plans to take the tool suite outside of China. The number of active Tencent Cloud customers abroad doubled in one year, with a presence in over 150 countries. The company operates more than 2 million servers and has opened or expanded data centers in Frankfurt, Malaysia, Mexico, Osaka, Riyadh, and Thailand. In Brazil, Tencent Cloud has maintained a data center in São Paulo since November 2021, its first in Latin America. There is still no scheduled date for the launch of Buddy One and Tencent Drive in the country.
Among the international customers already announced are Telkomsel, Indonesia’s largest mobile operator, and eMAG, an Eastern European commerce platform that has migrated to Tencent’s cloud. WorkBuddy has had an international version since May, and the company is taking its entire line of agents, including the programming assistant CodeBuddy, abroad.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Buddy One? An office suite launched in October 2026 that places the WorkBuddy AI agent at the center of operations, integrating a text editor, video conferencing, a knowledge base, and search, all through a single account with unified storage.
How does WorkBuddy connect to ERP and CRM? Through the open MCP standard, which allows the agent to access data from multiple systems simultaneously and generate reports without requiring migration.
When will Hy4 be released? The final version is expected very soon, following the test version released in August 2026. The cheaper Hy4 Flash will follow.
Who are the competitors? In China, they are DingTalk (Alibaba) and Feishu (ByteDance). In the West, they are Copilot (Microsoft) and Gemini (Google Workspace).
Is Buddy One already available in Brazil? There is still no date for a local launch. WorkBuddy has had an international version since May 2026, and Tencent Cloud has operated a data center in São Paulo since 2021.
