At LEAP 2024, Tencent made its inaugural appearance. The company believes the kingdom is set to emerge as both powerful consumer and developers of high-end digital media services. Tencent Cloud, is a leading cloud organisation that provides different businesses with stable and secure industry-leading products and services. The platform leverages technology like cloud computing, AI, IoT, big data analytics and network security.
At LEAP apart from making a slew of announcements, Tencent Cloud was focussed on their next steps and growth in the region. The Chinese giant works with industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.
Dowson Tong, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industries Group (CSIG), and Dan Hu, Vice President of Tencent Cloud International, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) spoke about the growth of the region and the company’s plans in the region at the event.
In a conversation with edge/, Dan Hu spoke about what we can expect from Tencent Cloud in Saudi Arabia.
Tell us the key strategic plans for Tencent Cloud in the KSA region and why?
Tencent Cloud began its expansion into the Middle East market in 2022. This strategic move came after we experienced healthy and steady growth in our priority markets, which include Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Saudi Arabia is fast emerging as a global business and entertainment hub, aided by a clear economic diversification plan as laid out in Vision 2030. With digital transformation as a catalyst, the kingdom’s economic redevelopment and the Middle East more broadly, are well-positioned to benefit from tech innovation.
What are the core tech products you are looking to develop in the KSA region and why?
We see opportunities to support the Kingdom’s digital economic aspirations, with Tencent Cloud well-positioned as the #1 cloud services provider in the video, audio, and media sector, to provide a host of next-gen digital media and entertainment solutions. This aims to support Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation in emerging high-impact economic sectors, namely media, streaming, retail, tourism, and even telco.
For example, physical events can now be amplified through streaming services with Tencent Real-Time Communications (TRTC) —an AI-powered and cloud-based innovation — to create seamless, low-latency live streams for millions of online viewers.
As for the gaming industry, Tencent AI Lab has pioneered AI-powered game development tools which are able to drastically speed up the development of 3D virtual video game environments from years to just weeks. Tencent Cloud looks to provide more engaging and unique gaming experiences, and support for the local and regional game development space, especially with the growth of Saudi Arabia’s tech and gaming community.
Further, to support the increased demand for digital avatars in various fields, such as customer service, sales and marketing, virtual tour guides, and more, Tencent Cloud’s Digital Human Creation Platform allows retailers, live streamers, and tourism companies to create these digital avatars to better engage with and support their customers.
What are the key technological trends you see in the region?
Sectors like media, entertainment, technology, retail and international tourism used to be on the periphery in Saudi Arabia, but are now at the forefront, bolstered by several digital initiatives. These key industries can be digitally transformed to provide unique experiences to users, which in turn creates new revenue streams for businesses in the digital economy.
This contributes to the trend of growing and widespread demand for digital convergence and immersive experiences across the region. Recent technological advancements such as real-time engagement, digital twin, and audio/video compression make this experience increasingly achievable.
Immersive experiences across the real and virtual worlds may become the norm in the near future, aided by technologies such as AI, and will no longer be confined to a handful of very specific, controlled circumstances.
What are the AI-specific innovations Tencent is looking at and why?
Our extensive experience in developing and adopting AI technologies has benefited numerous business areas, including advertising, video conferencing, collaborative tools, customer services, short-form videos, and cloud computing.
This includes integrating AI-enabled functions and applications powered by large model capabilities into various products such as Tencent Meeting, Tencent QiDian, Tencent Docs, and digital human technologies.
For instance, Tencent Meeting has introduced an AI assistant that can support complex functions like extracting information, analysing content, and managing conference logistics. It can even generate post-meeting notes to facilitate more efficient meeting summaries.
Tencent Cloud’s Video and Media AI Solution is backed by image processing and deep learning combined with technologies such as facial and image recognition. The solution offers features like intelligent video processing to repair video defects, intelligent video quality detection and intelligent face fusion effects.
For example, Tencent Cloud Xiaowei’s virtual sign language interpreter was used as an online sportscaster during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. We believe 3D modelling and speech recognition technologies, which are powered by multimodal interaction, can now express over 1.6 million sign language words and phrases, with an accuracy rate of over 90 per cent.
Lastly, as part of our development around generative AI capabilities, Tencent has opted to release our large language model, Hunyuan, to our enterprise users in China — an approach which balances the performance of consumer-facing, large-model AI-powered chatbots, with the pragmatic needs of businesses to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs, and protect the privacy of proprietary data.
At Tencent, we see the goal of artificial intelligence as one that serves industries, people, and society. Our innovations are underpinned by this principle — Tencent is committed to collaborating with regional partners to harness the power of AI, enabling businesses to drive industry innovation and improve its people’s quality of life.
Currently, KSA and China have several partnerships on, what is the role of Tencent here and how do you see it further growing?
As Tencent continues to expand its business overseas, we look to enhance cross-border business connectivity and collaborate closely with local businesses and public organizations to support the healthy growth of the digital ecosystem in its regional markets, specifically in digital content, connectivity, games, cloud, and AI technology.
Local and global collaborations will be essential in building a supportive digital ecosystem and dynamic talent pool in Saudi Arabia. This will allow us to foster an invaluable exchange of information and knowledge to address the technology demands from new and varied verticals.
We aim to continue supporting global and Chinese enterprises expanding into Saudi Arabia and seek opportunities to help Saudi Arabian enterprises in their globalisation efforts, promoting their businesses and offerings in the Chinese markets, in particular in the retail and tourism sectors, by leveraging Tencent’s digital ecosystem.
What is your view of AI in the region and what are the kinds of future growth you are expecting out of KSA?
The Middle East is one of our fastest-growing regions, with many regional customers showing strong interest in exploring Tencent Cloud’s Mini Program platform, in addition to tapping into our AI products. We have also seen our revenue in this region increase fourfold since our local business was established.
Moving forward, we will continue to explore opportunities in focus sectors such as public institutions, telecommunications, retail, tourism, media, live-streaming, e-commerce, and gaming.
What are your future plans for the region?
We have identified the Middle East as a growth market for Tencent Cloud and is a key part of our international business expansion strategy along with other key global markets.
The demand for these new experiences, bolstered by AI innovations, creates exciting opportunities for global companies like Tencent, where we play an active role in building sustainable digital ecosystems. We are excited to grow our presence in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and support its digital economic aspirations.
