Tencent Gets Second OpenAI Researcher to Work on Visual-Language Model

JAKARTA - Tencent Holdings again recruits a former OpenAI researcher. The Chinese internet giant is said to have attracted Tian Yonglong to the large language model or LLM department to help develop visual-language models.

Yicai Global, quoted Thursday, July 9, reported that the information was provided by a source at Tencent. According to the source, Tian will be involved in research and development of visual-language models.

LLM is an artificial intelligence model trained with very large data to understand and generate text. The visual-language model combines the ability to read images and understand language.

This is Tencent's second recruitment from OpenAI. In December, the Shenzhen-based company appointed former OpenAI researcher Vinces Yao as head of artificial intelligence scientist as well as head of the AI Infra and LLM department.

Tian has a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT. His main research areas include computer vision, visual representation learning, and generative models.

Before joining OpenAI, Tian had worked at DeepMind, a Google-backed AI company. At OpenAI, Tian worked with Yao.

Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent Dowson Tong said Yao had simplified many processes at the company. In an interview with Yicai last month, Tong also said Tencent's LLM, Hunyuan, had made great progress.

Yao previously led the development of AI agents at OpenAI. At Tencent, he reports directly to Tencent President Martin Lau.

Yao also led the development of Hunyuan. Tencent introduced a preview version of Hy3 in April, then released the Hy3 version earlier this month.

In addition to developing Hunyuan, Yao also helped promote joint design between Tencent's LLM and Yuanbao, the company's AI-based consumer app.