- Tencent released Hy4, its first model that can understand images and operate software autonomously.
- The model weights will follow at a later, unspecified date; for now Hy4 is available via Tencent Cloud, OpenRouter, and the Yuanbao chatbot.
- Tencent says a revamped search feature cut Hy4’s hallucination rate in web research from roughly 16% to about 5% in internal tests.
- Partner platform Comein says Hy4 is the only Chinese model it rates on par with Claude Opus 5.5, in second place behind it.
What Happened
Tencent released Hy4, the finished version of a model it previewed roughly two months ago, adding image understanding and the ability to control software directly, The Decoder reported Nov 5. Tencent says it is trained on significantly more data than its predecessor and, for the first time, ranks among the strongest open-weight models — though the weights themselves won’t ship until a later date.
Why It Matters
The release adds Tencent to a crowded field of Chinese labs racing to match Western frontier models; Tencent’s own evaluation puts Claude Opus 5.5 in the lead, a benchmark other labs like Meta have also used as their reference point. It follows other recent Tencent AI moves, including reports of talks to back rival lab DeepSeek, underscoring how competitive and interconnected China’s AI ecosystem has become.
Technical Details
Hy4’s headline feature is image understanding: in a demo, it locates a roughly two-meter component on a warehouse rooftop within a 2.8-gigapixel aerial photo by generating and reviewing cropped sections via code. The model can also operate software directly, trained specifically on tools like Blender and CAD programs. In a test with more than 200 finance professionals across nearly 600 real-world tasks, Tencent says Hy4 ranked ahead of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3.1 Pro, and GLM-5.3 Flash, and its hallucination rate in web research fell from close to 16% to about 5%.
Who’s Affected
Tencent’s own gaming studios are already using Hy4 for configuration and bug-finding work on titles like Honor of Kings, while finance and office workers are the target users for its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint collaboration features. Partner platforms Comein and Manus, which independently tested Hy4, reported it performing close to Claude Opus 5.5 on data queries and document tasks respectively.
What’s Next
Tencent has not set a date for releasing Hy4’s model weights, which it says will follow the current cloud and app-based rollout.
Source: The Decoder, Nov 5, 2026.
