Tencent on Thursday unveiled a new artificial intelligence model that it says can answer queries faster than global hit DeepSeek’s R1, the latest sign that the startup’s success at home and abroad is putting pressure on its larger Chinese rivals.Tencent said in a statement that Hunyuan Turbo S can answer queries in under a second, differentiating it from “DeepSeek R1, Hunyuan T1 and other slow-thinking models that need to ‘think for a while before answering.’” Tencent added that in tests of knowledge, math and reasoning, Turbo S’s capabilities were comparable to DeepSeek-V3, which powers DeepSeek’s AI chatbot that has surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT in app store downloads.DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The success of DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 models, the first time a Chinese company has received widespread acclaim and adoption in Silicon Valley, has also prompted Chinese tech giants such as Tencent to scramble to launch new versions of the AI models they began developing after OpenAI‘s ChatGPT came out in late 2022. Last month, just days after DeepSeek-R1 shook up the global tech order and triggered a sell-off in AI stocks outside of China, e-commerce giant Alibaba (9988.HK), opened in a new tab, released the Qwen 2.5-Max model, claiming that it outperformed DeepSeek-V3 in all aspects. Tencent also said that the new Turbo S is many times cheaper to use than previous generations, highlighting how DeepSeek’s open source and low-price strategy has forced other leading Chinese AI companies to charge users less.