Big News: Another Top AI Expert Joins Tencent Hunyuan, Starting Next Wednesday

On January 30, Bian Niushi learned that Tencent Hunyuan has made another notable leadership hire.

According to an official announcement, Pang Tianyu—formerly a Senior Research Scientist at Sea AI Lab in Singapore—has joined Tencent. He will serve as Chief Research Scientist for Tencent Hunyuan and as the technical lead for Multimodal Reinforcement Learning (Principal Research Scientist and Tech Lead of Multimodal RL).

Pang also confirmed the move on Xiaohongshu, where he shared the news and posted hiring needs for Tencent Hunyuan. In the comments, he added that he will officially start next Wednesday.

Public information shows that Pang previously worked as a Research Scientist at Sea AI Lab. His research focuses on trustworthy machine learning and generative models, and he has published more than 20 papers across top-tier venues including ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, and ECCV. He has also received multiple honors, such as the Microsoft Scholars Award, Baidu Scholarship, Zhong Shimo Scholarship, and NVIDIA Academic Pioneer Award.

This hire is the latest signal of Tencent’s increasingly active push in AI over recent months.

On December 17, 2025, Tencent circulated an internal email announcing an organizational reshuffle within its Technology and Engineering Group (TEG). The update included the establishment of an AI Infra Department and a Data Computing Platform Department, the renaming of the Data Platform Department to the AI Data Department, and the dissolution of the Machine Learning Platform Department, with related teams and responsibilities reassigned to AI Infra and the Data Computing Platform.

At the same time, Tencent appointed Yao Shunyu as Chief AI Scientist within the CEO/President’s Office, reporting directly to President Martin Lau. Yao also took on dual roles as head of TEG’s Large Language Model Department and the AI Infra Department, reporting to TEG President Lu Shan.

At Tencent’s recent annual meeting, Chairman Pony Ma emphasized that 2025 is a major year for AI. He noted that Hunyuan has undergone structural adjustments over the past year to strengthen talent acquisition—especially among PhD graduates—and that Tencent plans to further attract “AI-native” talent to rebuild and upgrade its AI team.