Embracing Agents Fully, Tencent Is Quietly Starting a New Competitive "Shrimp Farming" Race
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Author | Huang Yu
There is no need to doubt Tencent’s speed in adopting new trends.
Last year, when Deepseek exploded in popularity, Tencent was the most proactive among leading internet giants in integrating Deepseek into its products. This year, OpenClaw, the “lobster,” is trending. In order to seize the super entry point of AI Agents, Tencent is once again moving swiftly, supporting the nationwide “raising lobsters” initiative both online and offline.
Wallstreetcn has learned that the Tencent PC Manager team is now developing a one-click startup package for OpenClaw, called QClaw. After downloading the QClaw application, you can easily deploy “lobster” on your local computer with one click.
A Tencent insider revealed that QClaw is still in internal testing and is expected to launch soon.
According to the introduction, the core form of QClaw is a local one-click startup package. After downloading and installing, you can deploy "lobster" on your local computer. If OpenClaw has already been installed on your computer, it can be directly linked with one click.
According to QClaw’s current official website, QClaw supports Mac & Windows, is built-in with the Kimi-2.5 model with switch support, allows direct linking to WeChat, zero configuration, and enables remote AI work anytime, anywhere. All data remains local and does not go through the cloud.
Tencent is actively embracing the “lobster” in multiple ways.
Just last week, Tencent launched a free on-site OpenClaw deployment event at its Shenzhen headquarters plaza, attracting over a thousand participants and also drawing the attention of Peter Steinberger, the father of Lobster, on X platform.
Internally, it seems Tencent has started a “lobster raising” competition. In addition to QClaw, it has launched products similar to OpenClaw such as WorkBuddy, and has enabled OpenClaw calls via WeChat Work and QQ.
At present, major mainstream cloud services, big model vendors, and OpenClaw ecosystem products such as Tencent Cloud Lighthouse, Kimi, Minimax, EasyClaw, Coze Button Programming, Lobster AI, uCloud, TCADP, Codebuddy, Huawei Cloud, Baidu Smart Cloud, etc., are gradually launching support for integrating OpenClaw via WeChat Work. Users can quickly empower their WeChat Work with AI capabilities through lightweight vendor solutions.
Even earlier, Tencent had already launched its own Agent products.
For example, WorkBuddy developed by the Tencent Cloud CodeBuddy team, started internal testing in early February and officially launched on March 9, marking Tencent’s entry into the desktop Agent tool market competition.
However, compared to OpenClaw’s system-level permissions and more flexible operations, WorkBuddy is positioned more as “reading authorized folders on the computer, to achieve various autonomous operations.”
The product highlights “more user friendly, safer”—no complex deployment steps, from installation to connecting with WeChat Work can be done as fast as 1 minute. It currently supports remote “lobster work” via WeChat Work, QQ, Feishu, DingTalk, etc.
During the new launch period, WorkBuddy even offered a no-threshold experience subsidy: for all Mainland China users, 5,000 Credits given for free. After claiming, users can directly use them to drive Claw to perform tasks.
An emerging industry consensus is that the war of Chatbots has basically ended, and the next focus of competition is shifting to AI Agents that “can actually work”.
Against this backdrop, all internet giants and AI startups are now targeting AI Agents with full force.
Tencent has already formed a full chain layout in the AI Agent domain: underlying technology + cloud platform + open-source framework + consumer-end entry + industry applications, with the core relying on the Hunyuan large model and cloud infrastructure to build an “accessible by everyone, easy for enterprises, and open ecosystem” of intelligent bodies, seizing the entry and service distribution rights in the AI era.
For Agent products aimed at the general public, Tencent management revealed they will be divided into two categories: one is the general-purpose Agent, which anyone can make—you create an agent, it completes tasks for users in the external world; the other is an AI Agent embedded within the WeChat ecosystem, running based on WeChat’s unique system.
For general-purpose AI Agents, Tencent is building this capability via AI-native products like Yuanbao, IMA, etc.
According to Tencent’s plan, initially, they can quickly answer questions; then, with “chain-thinking” long reasoning models added, they will handle more complex queries. Later, they will perform more complex tasks, gradually evolving “embodied intelligence” abilities, interacting with other apps, programs, and even external APIs, to assist users.
The AI Agent built within the WeChat ecosystem is a differentiated product that other vendors find hard to copy.
Tencent President Liu Chiping mentioned at last year's earnings meeting that WeChat will eventually launch an AI intelligent body to help users accomplish many tasks with AI within WeChat.
WeChat has five major ecosystems: communication, social, content (official accounts, video accounts), mini-programs, payment & business, enabling intelligent bodies to understand users’ needs, intentions and interests, and enabling task completion in a closed loop. Such an intelligent body is the “ideal assistant for users.”
AI Agent is one of the key battlegrounds to win in the AI era. The war has just begun.
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