On August 12, during Tencent’s 2026 Q2 earnings call, President Martin Lau addressed the company’s increased capital expenditure in the second quarter. He noted that Tencent is indeed making large-scale investments in computing power and has already seen clear upside potential, with multiple new applications performing well. Additionally, using this compute capacity for cloud leasing services is expected to generate substantial revenue growth and improve the return on capital expenditure. For some previously placed compute orders, if sold now, they could yield profits over 30% higher than the procurement prices from a few months ago.
Lau stated, “If we proceed in the order of first using the capacity to build proprietary models, then developing applications, and finally leasing out the compute power externally, we can build a highly scalable native AI business that will generate very substantial profits.”
Tencent’s 2026 Q2 financial report shows that the company’s capital expenditure surged to RMB 52.8 billion in the quarter, far exceeding expectations of RMB 32.1 billion and nearly tripling from RMB 19.1 billion in the same period last year. Tencent management indicated that this is a strategic upfront investment in AI infrastructure, aimed at supporting the Hy model upgrade, WorkBuddy and CodeBuddy inference demands, WeChat AI features, and meeting the growing demand from external customers for cloud services.
