A.I. for Sale in China

Tencent takes artificial intelligence to the masses as Big Data takes on a new form

Andrew Willis 27 July, 2020 | 1:58AM
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Andrew Willis: After industrializing just about everything physical, Chinese e-commerce tech giant Tencent is on the brink of industrializing everything virtual, especially personal data. And the business of making data out of data could be transformational for shareholders… and society.

Equity analyst Chelsea Tam says Tencent is transforming its business from the consumer internet to the industrial internet. Their new business is all about making data by taking one of the best A.I.s in the world, and plugging it into the wider public web – and then parcelling out its immense computing power as a service on a scale we may not have seen before.

We think multi-trillion-dollar Tencent is fairly valued…for now. Perhaps we’re leaving the era where Big Data consisted of only a handful of giant tech companies, and are entering an era where every consumer’s touchpoint is an aggregator and each touchpoint has access to other information about you that it can use to make new assumptions about you and reach out with new offerings. Tencent knows the cloud is the backbone of A.I.

We see benefits from a strong centralized processor, with great societal benefits from advanced hospital management, medical diagnosis, industrial innovation, to improvements in the functionality of governments. But it’s important to also mention that on the flip side because we’re just getting started on the privacy and antitrust concerns.

For Morningstar, I’m Andrew Willis.

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About Author

Andrew Willis

Andrew Willis  is Senior Editor at Morningstar Canada. He previously produced content for Fidelity Investments and finance industry events for Euromoney Institutional Investor and has written in the past for Thomson Reuters and CNN. Follow him on Twitter @Andrew_M_Willis.

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