Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba are open sourcing agentic AI frameworks to accelerate innovation and challenge US rivals in the global race for intelligent agents.
China’s leading technology companies are accelerating innovation in artificial intelligence by open sourcing agentic frameworks, the software platforms required to build and manage AI agents, directly challenging US players such as AutoGen and OpenAI Swarm.
Tencent Holdings became the latest entrant on Tuesday, open-sourcing its new Youtu-Agent framework. Developed by Youtu Labs, the company’s AI research department, the framework was released on Microsoft’s open source code-hosting platform GitHub last week. Tencent said its approach would “simplify the agent configuration process.”
A Youtu-Agent agent built on the open source DeepSeek-V3.1 model achieved a benchmark score of 71.47 per cent on WebWalkerQA, a test for web traversal tasks.
This release follows earlier moves by Tencent’s domestic rivals. In July, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, open sourced its agent development platform Coze Studio. In March, Alibaba Group Holding made its Qwen-Agent framework open source. Alibaba also owns the South China Morning Post.
Agentic frameworks are critical enablers for AI systems that can autonomously plan and execute subtasks to complete complex missions. Examples include Chinese start-up Butterfly Effect’s Manus and OpenAI’s Operator.
By making these frameworks open source, Chinese tech giants are not only showcasing technical capability but also aiming to democratise access, set global benchmarks, and drive adoption of their tools. Tencent’s GitHub release highlights the country’s broader strategy: harnessing open source collaboration to strengthen its AI position against US counterparts.
