Morgan Stanley expects Tencent to benefit the most from the DeepSeek new version iteration

JP Morgan published a report stating that the Lunar New Year remains the most concentrated and historically effective release window in China's consumer technology sector. If the new version of DeepSeek is released during the Lunar New Year, the truly significant impact will mainly be reflected in the potential release of platform economic benefits. If this iteration can achieve a significant reduction in inference costs with an efficiency-first approach, AI will become economically viable and can be directly embedded in high-frequency consumer products, rather than being limited to standalone chatbot forms.

For internet platforms, the bank believes that Tencent (00700.HK) is most likely to benefit the most from the potential new version of DeepSeek, followed by vertical leaders such as Trip.com (09961.HK), Kuaishou (01024.HK), and Beike (02423.HK), while the impact on Alibaba (09988.HK) and Baidu (09888.HK) is relatively mixed.

For independent model vendors like Zhipu (02513.HK) and MiniMax (00100.HK), these vendors also have flagship models that have been released or are about to be released. Their direct impact is usually not about immediately grabbing customers, but more about capability signals and technology spillover. DeepSeek has always leaned towards open-source first rather than maximizing short-term commercialization, so its competitive effects are often transmitted through the recognition of model quality and the validated technological direction. If this release includes genuine efficiency or systemic breakthroughs, these methods will quickly spread within the ecosystem—raising peer benchmarks and compressing iteration cycles. In this context, the bank reiterates its positive view on Zhipu AI and MiniMax, as their capability enhancements are most directly reflected in the API monetization process