Outside China, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei are often described as four versions of the same company. Reading their 2025 annual reports side by side convinced me they are not. They are four different bets on four different bottlenecks: distribution, compute, autonomy and self-sufficiency.

Tencent - distribution, monetised carefully

Tencent already owns attention, and its 2025 results show how carefully it is now monetising it. The group reported revenue of RMB 751.8 billion, up 14% year on year, with profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 224.8 billion, up 16%, and gross margin improved to 56%. Games remain the cash engine, but the number I found most telling is marketing services: RMB 145.0 billion, up 19%, largely because AI improved ad targeting inside WeChat and its content platforms. Enterprise services grew 22% in the fourth quarter and Tencent Cloud reached scaled profitability for the first time. Spending points the same way: RMB 79.2 billion of capital expenditure and RMB 85.8 billion of R&D, both records. Tencent treats AI as an amplifier of products people already open every day rather than as a separate business - including cloud gaming, which both Tencent and Alibaba entered after Black Myth: Wukong proved demand for high-end games without a high-end PC.

Alibaba - letting commerce pay for the compute

Alibaba is running the opposite play: a mature business funding an expensive one. Cloud revenue accelerated to 36% growth in the December 2025 quarter, with AI-related product revenue growing at triple-digit rates for ten consecutive quarters. On the consumer side the same strategy is visible - the Qwen app now reaches more than 300 million monthly active users across its endpoints and is being woven directly into Alibaba's shopping and travel services, while Alipay has moved beyond QR codes into tap-to-pay. Management has committed more than RMB 380 billion over three years to cloud and AI infrastructure and has set a target of USD 100 billion in annual cloud and AI revenue within five years. That ambition is not free: in that same December quarter group revenue grew only 2% while operating profit fell 74%, because heavy subsidies for quick commerce are draining margin. Alibaba is buying the right to become a compute company with money earned as a retail company.

Baidu - the pure AI bet

Baidu is the clearest example of a company rebuilt around AI. AI business revenue reached RMB 40 billion in 2025, up 48%, and accounted for 43% of core business revenue in the fourth quarter; AI cloud grew 34% and AI-native marketing services grew 301%. Its robotaxi service Apollo Go delivered 3.4 million fully driverless rides in that quarter, peaked above 300,000 rides per week, and passed 20 million cumulative rides across 26 cities by February 2026, with London, Dubai and Abu Dhabi next. Baidu has also filed to spin off its Kunlunxin chip unit in Hong Kong. The risk is concentration: search advertising is still shrinking while these new lines scale, and a widely reported fleet-wide software failure in Wuhan in March 2026 showed how quickly operational trust can be lost.

Huawei - self-sufficiency as strategy

Huawei is not listed and does not report in the same way, but its 2025 annual report is the most striking document I read: revenue of RMB 880.9 billion, up 2.2%, and net profit of RMB 68.0 billion, up 8.7%, achieved while spending RMB 192.3 billion on R&D - 21.8% of revenue, with around 114,000 staff in research. Its fastest-growing unit is intelligent automotive solutions, up 72.1% to RMB 45.0 billion, which is why a telecoms equipment maker is now a serious force in EVs alongside Xiaomi. HarmonyOS 5 and 6 now run on more than 36 million devices with over 350,000 apps and more than 10 million registered developers, and Huawei reclaimed first place in mainland China smartphone shipments in 2025 with 46.8 million units. Huawei is not trying to win a single market; it is building a parallel stack - chips, operating system, cloud and vehicles - that cannot be switched off from outside.

What I take from this

For me, as a student aiming at software development, the lesson is to read the money rather than the marketing. Rising capital expenditure, a growing revenue share from one new segment, and a hiring push in a particular stack say far more than any keynote. Tencent rewards engineers who can put AI into products that already have users; Alibaba and Baidu reward cloud and model engineering; Huawei rewards systems and embedded work. Knowing which of those four problems actually excites me is a better career decision than simply choosing the biggest name.

References

1. Tencent Holdings, 2025 Annual Results - revenue RMB 751.8bn (+14%); profit attributable RMB 224.8bn (+16%); gross margin 56%; marketing services RMB 145.0bn (+19%); capex RMB 79.2bn; R&D RMB 85.8bn.
2. Alibaba Group, December 2025 quarter results and earnings call - cloud revenue +36%; AI-related product revenue triple-digit growth for ten consecutive quarters; RMB 380bn three-year AI and cloud infrastructure plan; Qwen app over 300 million MAU.
3. Baidu, Inc., Q4 and FY2025 results and earnings call - AI business revenue RMB 40bn (+48%); AI cloud +34%; AI-native marketing +301%; Apollo Go 3.4m quarterly fully driverless rides, 20m cumulative, 26 cities.
4. Huawei, 2025 Annual Report - revenue RMB 880.9bn (+2.2%); net profit RMB 68.0bn (+8.7%); R&D RMB 192.3bn (21.8% of revenue); intelligent automotive solutions RMB 45.0bn (+72.1%); HarmonyOS 5/6 on over 36m devices.
5. Omdia, mainland China smartphone shipments 2025 - Huawei 46.8m units, 17% share, first annual lead since 2020.
6. Connah Kendrick, "Industry & Community Engagement, Week 4 - Tech Giants in China", Manchester Metropolitan University (2026) - market research prompts: top players, what separates them, what they must do to stay relevant.