Tencent’s giveaway campaign for AI chatbot Yuanbao blocked – by WeChat

Feb 4, 2026

Tencent Holdings’ aggressive red-packet blitz to promote its artificial intelligence chatbot Yuanbao ran into a roadblock on Wednesday from the company’s own super app WeChat, dealing a blow to a US$144 million effort to acquire users for the emerging AI app. WeChat, known as Weixin on the mainland, announced on Wednesday that it would restrict Yuanbao links from opening directly within WeChat, effective immediately, in response to “user feedback and complaints”, according to a...

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