It is reported that Tencent has poached an OpenAI researcher: Tian Yonglong has recently joined and will participate in VLM research and development
Recently, Tencent poached former OpenAI researcher Tian Yonglong to join the large language model department, responsible for the development of visual language models (VLM). This follows the recruitment of top talent from OpenAI after Yao Shunyu, aiming to strengthen its AI infrastructure and large model technology capabilities, and to promote the iteration and business implementation of models such as Hunyuan
According to reports cited by the media, Yonglong Tian, a former researcher at OpenAI, has recently joined Tencent's (00700) large language model department and will primarily participate in the research and development of visual language models (VLM).
This follows Tencent's significant recruitment of core OpenAI member Shunyu Yao last year, as the company continues to attract top technical talent from the leading American AI firm. In December 2025, Tencent announced an upgrade to its large model R&D structure, establishing new departments for AI Infra, AI Data, and data computing platforms, appointing former OpenAI senior researcher Shunyu Yao as the chief AI scientist of the "CEO/President's Office," while also serving as the head of the AI Infra and large language model departments.
It is reported that Yonglong Tian's core research areas at OpenAI included computer vision, visual representation learning, and generative models. Before joining OpenAI, he served as a senior research scientist at Google Research in Cambridge, having joined at the end of 2022, and later transitioned to Google DeepMind in May 2024.
Reports indicate that Yonglong Tian and Shunyu Yao are not only alumni of Tsinghua University but also worked in the same research team at OpenAI during the same period.
Currently, Shunyu Yao's team launched the new "Hy3 preview" base model in April this year, with Token usage exceeding 3.66 trillion in the first week; on July 6, Hy3 was officially released, further improving the quality and diversity of post-training data based on the preview version and expanding the RL computing power scale, achieving significant progress in tasks such as inference, agents, and long context. At the same time, Tencent has deeply integrated model technology with its core businesses, launching the WorkBuddy AI agent, game AI generation tools, and a multimodal creative generation system for advertising.
In addition to Shunyu Yao and Yonglong Tian, former Chief Research Scientist at SeaAI in Singapore, Tianyu Pang, also joined Tencent's Hy3 team in February this year as Chief Research Scientist, responsible for large model training optimization. To further build its talent pool, Tencent is currently vigorously promoting the "Qingyun Plan," recruiting top graduates in the fields of large models and infrastructure globally
