THE HOOK
Tencent just dropped Hy4 and priced it like it's trying to bankrupt everyone else's inference margins.
THE GIST
Tencent launched Hy4, its newest large language model, with open weights and system cards promised in the coming days. API pricing stays at roughly $0.90 per million input tokens and $2.70 per million output, with a cheaper Hy4 Flash on the way.
THE TAKE
Open weights at this price is a direct shot at Western labs charging ten times more, and Tencent has billions of users to subsidise the giveaway. The real catch: those weights aren't out yet. Promises are free; downloads count.
OPINION
Tencent is also running TokenHub at 50% off through December 31 and making WorkBuddy and CodeBuddy free until November 15, which is a customer grab dressed up as generosity. Pair that with Meituan training a 1.6-trillion-parameter model on Chinese chips and the Chinese open-model camp looks less like catch-up and more like a price war.
- Story type: Breaking news
- Impact: Medium
- Confidence: High (official announcement)
- Audience: Developers
- What changed: Tencent released Hy4 via API and promised open weights at about $0.90 per million input tokens.
- What to watch: Whether the Hy4 weights and system cards actually land on schedule, and how they score on independent benchmarks.
- Reading time: 1 minute
