China’s artificial intelligence sector is evolving into a fiercely contested arena. It hasn’t been long since artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek introduced its low-cost yet efficient AI models, shaking up the tech world. Ever since, several other companies have joined in, intensifying the race. In the latest news, Chinese tech giant Tencent has launched the official version of its T1 reasoning model, marking a step forward in the nation’s accelerating AI push.
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According to The South China Morning Post, the new artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning model, Hunyuan T1, rivals DeepSeek’s R1 in performance and pricing. Tencent’s model leverages large-scale reinforcement learning, a technique which has also been employed by DeepSeek in its R1 reasoning model. According to the company, the upgraded T1 model features faster response times and improved capabilities for handling extended text documents.
T1 can “keep the content logic clear and the text neat and clean”, the post said, while the hallucination rate is “extremely low”.
The T1 has been officially released after the beta run of the T1 preview on Tencent’s chatbot Yuanbao. It scored 87.2 points on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) Pro benchmark, a test that thoroughly assesses large language models’ language comprehension and reasoning across diverse domains. The score beat DeepSeek-R1’s 84 points but trailed the 89.3 points achieved by OpenAI’s o1, according to South China Morning Post’s report.
Tencent has claimed to be the first in the industry to adopt a hybrid architecture combining Google’s Transformer and Mamba. This architecture has been developed by Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University. According to the company, the hybrid approach “significantly reduces training and inference costs” by cutting memory usage.
The company further praised T1 as “significantly reducing resource consumption while ensuring the ability to capture long text information”. T1 offers a 200 percent increase in decoding speed.
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10. monday.com Ltd. (NASDAQ:MNDY)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 68
monday.com Ltd. (NASDAQ:MNDY) develops software applications globally, offering a cloud-based Work OS for creating work management tools. On March 17, Scotiabank analyst Allan Verkhovski lowered the firm’s price target on the stock to $315 from $400 and kept an “Outperform” rating on the shares. The analyst told investors in a research note that amid worsening demand trends and recession odds rising, it is favoring market leaders in the software and services space. This is particularly true for those with strong free cash flow that can benefit from artificial intelligence.
9. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 77
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leader in AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection. On March 20, Jefferies maintained a “Buy” rating and a $425 price target on the shares. The firm said it was positive about Google’s acquisition of cloud security company Wiz after it came away from its meeting with Crowdstrike CFO Burt Podbere.
The analyst also told investors in a research note that it will take some time to fully integrate Wiz tech into the Google Cloud Platform. This could help Crowdstrike since its agent architecture is viewed better than Wiz’s agentless offering. The company also views the second half of FY26 positively in terms of net new ARR and free cash flow margin expansion. It is also prioritizing Flex, Crowdstrike’s flexible licensing program, and views benefits from vendor consolidation due to budget scrutiny.
