---
endpoint: analytics
pattern: Internet
status: done
latency_ms: 168423
conversation_id: ee1ef4c3-c379-4a45-bd3c-8550a8c7981c
citations: 16
created: 2026-05-31 21:01:27Z
---

# Who are the key customers and suppliers of Tencent?

# Tencent (700 HK) — Key Customers & Suppliers

Tencent operates a platform-and-ecosystem business model: its "customers" are heterogeneous (advertisers, merchants, subscribers, enterprise cloud users, game distributors), and its supplier exposure is concentrated in compute hardware (GPUs, CPUs, networking chips). Below is a structured map sourced from Tencent's own earnings calls and conference deck commentary.

---

## I. Key Customers

### A. Online Advertising Clients (largest external customer cohort)
Tencent's ad business — Weixin Moments, Video Accounts, Mini Programs, Mobile Ad Network — is monetized across a mix of brand and performance advertisers concentrated in a handful of verticals.

| Vertical / Channel | Key Customer Examples & Detail |
|---|---|
| **E-commerce** | JD.com is Tencent's flagship performance-ads partner — JD's open-platform merchants funnel ad spend back into Tencent's pCPC system. Management says "JD has been an important partner, actually contributes — their ecosystem...contributes a meaningful portion of our total performance ads" [3]. |
| **Performance ad verticals** | E-commerce, education, and games drove Q4 2019 ad growth: "underpinned by healthy demand from verticals including e-commerce, education, and games" [7]. |
| **Long-form video advertisers** | "Long-form video ad revenue increased double-digit YoY, as popular self-commissioned drama series attracted marketing budgets" (Q1 2024) [2]. |
| **Mobile Ad Network** | High-traffic 3rd-party media partners (entertainment/social apps) integrate rewarded video inventory; in Q4 2019 the Mobile Ad Network revenue more than doubled YoY [7]. |

### B. WeChat / Weixin Ecosystem Merchants
Tencent's "indirect" customer base — merchants that operate inside Weixin via Official Accounts, Mini Programs, Mini Shops, and Weixin Pay — is the single largest customer count on the platform.

- **Weixin Mini Shop merchants**: Tencent is building a "unified and trustworthy e-commerce platform within Weixin...features a standardized and indexed merchandises...And at the same time, the merchants are going to be verified and subject to quality monitoring" (Q3 2024) [8].
- **Offline merchant network — channel partners**: Tencent reached small merchants through "self-service platforms through our relationships with traditional merchant acquirers as well as key channel partners such as **Meituan-Dianping**" (Q4 2017) [6].
- **O2O / vertical-industry partners** historically anchored the ecosystem: Tencent invested in / partnered with **Didi Dache** (taxi), **Meituan-Dianping** (lifestyle/F&B), **JD** (e-commerce), **Dianping**, and **58.com (WUBA)** — "We have partnership with Dianping, we have partnership with WUBA, who have access to millions of O2O merchants" (Q4 2014) [5]. The rationale: "By partnering, we can actually leverage the skills owned by the best-in-class management in the entire market" (Q3 2015) [1].

### C. Enterprise / Cloud Customers (Tencent Cloud, WeCom, Tencent Meeting)
- **Tencent Cloud verticals**: gaming, video, finance, and government were the early enterprise customer base; international clients have become a growing cohort — "Revenue from our Tencent Cloud Media Services for short video/live-streaming processing and delivery grew over 50% YoY, with notable traction from international clients" (Q1 2024) [2].
- **Tencent Meeting**: "Revenue doubled YoY driven by increasing adoption and upselling among enterprise clients" (Q1 2024) [9].
- **WeCom**: corporate/SME merchants — "WeCom revenue tripled YoY, as merchants increasingly willing to pay for use of customer communication functionalities" (Q1 2024) [2].

### D. Consumer Subscribers (paid VAS users)
- Video, music, and gaming paid subscribers. Q1 2021: music subscriptions grew 41% YoY to 66 mn driven by TME [17]. Video and Super VIP/QQ Membership packages anchor digital-content monetization.

### E. FinTech Counterparties (commercial-payment merchants + wealth-mgmt fund partners)
- Mobile-payment merchants across "more than 30 industries, such as restaurants, transportation, convenience store, gas station and hospitals" (Q4 2017) [6]; wealth management distributes products from leading asset-management firms (money market funds, etc.).

---

## II. Key Suppliers

Tencent's supplier exposure is overwhelmingly in **compute infrastructure** (GPUs, CPUs, networking chips, memory) for both internal AI/cloud build-out and Tencent Cloud resale. Content and game IP licensors form a second tier.

### A. Compute Hardware — GPUs / CPUs / Networking
| Supplier | Role / Status |
|---|---|
| **NVIDIA** | Primary high-end AI GPU supplier. Tencent built "high-performance computing cluster based on NVIDIA **H800** GPUs" (Q1 2023 call) [11] and was an early bulk buyer: "we actually have one of the largest inventory of AI chips in China among all the players. And one of the key things that we have done was actually we were the first to put in order for H800" (Q3 2023) [10]. Post-H20 ban (2025), management says "we have a pretty strong stockpile of chips that we acquired previously, and that would be very useful for us in executing our AI strategy" [14] and "we do have enough chips for training and continuous upgrade of our existing models" [16]. |
| **Intel & AMD** | Long-tenured CPU suppliers. "We've been a big customer for the Intel and AMD and so forth for many years. We've been progressively growing our volume with them for many years" (Q4 2025 call) [12]. Tencent claims to be **AMD's largest cloud partner in China**: "we were the first cloud service provider in China to fully recognize the stepped up capabilities of AMD's recent generations of CPUs, becoming AMD's largest partner in the country" [15]. |
| **Networking-chip vendors** | Same call: long-term agreements signed with networking-chip suppliers ("We've been a big buyer of CPU and networking chips for many years before GPUs became such a big presence in data centers") [12]. |
| **Domestic Chinese GPU/ASIC designers** | Increasingly meaningful for **inference** workloads, where "in the inference world, people basically sort of are earning much lower margin and there are many more solutions and options" (Q4 2025) [13]. China-designed ASICs are seeing "more supply from fabs within China as well as more supply from fabs in neighboring countries" [12] — implying expanded reliance on domestic-designed chips. |
| **Memory suppliers** | Cited as a tightening but improving input — "we're seeing a better pricing environment, especially for memory and CPU" (Q4 2025) [15]. |

### B. Content & Distribution Partners (supplier-customer hybrid)
- **Game IP / licensors**: Tencent licenses and partners on titles (e.g., Ubisoft, Riot Games subsidiary, Krafton/PUBG, Activision/Call of Duty Mobile partner, Nexon). Earnings commentary historically references "content cost, in particular in relation to provisional games incentives for some licensed game content" [4].
- **App-store distribution counterparties**: Apple App Store and Google Play (international); domestic Android stores in China — Tencent has actively discussed app-store take-rate negotiations as a margin lever [16].
- **Long-form video content suppliers**: drama/animation studios (in-house plus 3rd-party) and sports rights holders (e.g., NBA basketball historically) drive media-advertising and subscription content costs.

---

## III. Synthesis — Where Concentration Risk Sits

1. **Customer side**: Tencent has *low single-customer concentration* — its revenue base is fragmented across hundreds of millions of subscribers, millions of WeChat-ecosystem merchants, and thousands of brand/performance advertisers. The closest thing to a "key customer" is the e-commerce vertical, where **JD** is the named anchor partner [3], and Meituan-Dianping in the offline-merchant acquiring loop [6].
2. **Supplier side**: Concentration is materially higher and primarily geopolitical. **NVIDIA H800/high-end GPU access** has been the most binding constraint on AI/cloud capacity [10][14]. CPU/networking exposure is dual-sourced across **Intel + AMD** with long-term contracts [12], and AMD specifically calls out Tencent as its largest China cloud partner [15]. Inference workloads are being progressively migrated to **domestic Chinese chip suppliers**, reducing single-supplier (NVIDIA) dependence over time [13][16].

---

**Sources**
[1] Tencent Holdings — Q3 2015 Earnings Call (15-Nov-2015)
[2] Tencent Holdings — Q1 2024 Conference Call Deck (slides)
[3] Tencent Holdings — Q1 2016 Earnings Call (31-Mar-2016)
[4] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2014 Earnings Call (30-Sep-2014)
[5] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2014 Earnings Call (Q&A: O2O partners — Dianping, WUBA)
[6] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2017 Earnings Call (Mobile payment / Meituan-Dianping channel)
[7] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2019 Earnings Call (ad verticals)
[8] Tencent Holdings — Q3 2024 Earnings Call (Weixin Mini Shop)
[9] Tencent Holdings — Q1 2024 Conference Call Deck (Tencent Meeting / enterprise clients)
[10] Tencent Holdings — Q3 2023 Earnings Call (H800 inventory; AI chip ban response)
[11] Tencent Holdings — Q1 2023 Earnings Call (NVIDIA H800 HPC cluster announcement)
[12] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2025 Earnings Call, 18-Mar-2026 (Intel/AMD/networking suppliers, GPU bottleneck)
[13] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2025 Earnings Call (in-house chip strategy; inference market structure)
[14] Tencent Holdings — Q1 2025 Earnings Call (H20 ban, stockpile, BIS rules)
[15] Tencent Holdings — Q4 2025 Earnings Call (AMD largest China cloud partner; memory pricing)
[16] Tencent Holdings — Q2 2025 Earnings Call, 13-Aug-2025 (chip sourcing / inference; app-store dynamics)
[17] Tencent Holdings — Q2 2021 Earnings Call (TME music subscriptions)

*Additional internal-research coverage (CLSA): "Tencent — HC O-PF (Accelerated game and ad growth)" 14-May-2025, "Tencent — HC O-PF (Solid games and ad performance)" 11-May-2025, "Asia Pacific Sustainable AI" 24-Jun-2025, "China Internet (AI expert takeaways on DeepSeek)" 04-Mar-2025 — all in CLSA RMS workspace; referenced for sector context.*

## Citations

- [1] **Q3 2015 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [2] **Tencent Holdings Limited - Q1 2024 - Conference Call Deck** · external
- [3] **Q1 2016 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [4] **Q4 2014 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [5] **Q4 2017 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [6] **Q4 2019 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [7] **Q3 2024 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [8] **Tencent Holdings Limited - Q1 2024 - Conference Call Deck** · external
- [9] **Q3 2023 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [10] **Q1 2023 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [11] **Tencent Holdings Ltd., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, 13-May-2026 8** · external
- [12] **Tencent Holdings Ltd., Q4 2025 Earnings Call, 18-March-2026 8** · external
- [13] **Q1 2025 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external
- [14] **Tencent Holdings Ltd., Q4 2025 Earnings Call, 18-March-2026 8** · external
- [15] **Tencent Holdings Ltd., Q2 2025 Earnings Call, 13-August-2025 8** · external
- [16] **Q2 2021 Tencent Holdings Limited** · external

