Tencent is launching Hy3 preview with the usual benchmark claims expected of a new large language model. But the more distinctive part of the rollout is where the company is putting its proof: inside products.
According to Tencent’s latest briefing materials, Hy3 preview has already been integrated into Yuanbao, CodeBuddy, WorkBuddy, ima, Tencent Docs and Peacekeeper Elite before its broader public rollout. That matters because the AI market is reaching a point where raw model claims increasingly look similar. In that environment, product performance may say more than another round of leaderboard results.
Hy3 preview itself is substantial. Tencent describes it as a fast-and-slow-thinking fused MoE language model with 295 billion total parameters, 21 billion activated parameters, and support for up to 256K context. The company says the model has improved inference efficiency by 40% and performs strongly across reasoning, instruction following, in-context learning, coding and agentic tasks. Tencent also cites more than 50 evaluation sets, including specialized tests such as SWE-Bench Verified, Terminal-Bench 2.0, BrowseComp, WideSearch, FrontierScience-Olympiad and IMOAnswerBench.
But Tencent is not relying on benchmarks alone to make the case. In CodeBuddy and WorkBuddy, the company says Hy3 preview reduced first-token latency by 54%, cut end-to-end duration by 47%, and improved task success rates to 99.99%+. Tencent also says the model has stably supported complex agent workflows of up to 495 steps in real user environments, spanning tasks such as document handling, data analysis, knowledge retrieval and tool orchestration. Those numbers give the launch a more concrete basis than the usual abstract benchmark language.
Tencent says HY3 is also being shaped through product co-design and open-source feedback, as the company works to improve the model’s performance in real-world scenarios ahead of the official HY3 release. Yao Shunyu, Tencent’s chief AI scientist, described the preview as the first step in rebuilding the Hunyuan model line, with further gains expected from continued pre-training and reinforcement-learning work.
In Yuanbao, Tencent says the model has been co-developed against product-side requirements including intent understanding, search quality, writing style, emotional intelligence and professionalism. In Peacekeeper Elite, the company says Hy3 preview has shown strong performance in AI NPC scenarios, including both persona-driven dialogue outside matches and more time-sensitive, human-like responses during matches. Together, those examples suggest Tencent is trying to define model progress through visible user-facing behavior, not just through lab-style evaluations.
Tencent is also pairing that product argument with pricing and deployment signals. Through TokenHub, Hy3 preview starts at RMB 1.2 per million input tokens and RMB 4 per million output tokens, with the company stressing lower deployment barriers for enterprise use. That helps frame the model not only as capable, but as practical to run at scale.
That may be the more important message behind the launch. Hy3 preview is not being presented as a model that exists apart from products. Tencent is using live product rollout to argue that the model already matters inside them. Tencent said users will be able to try HY3 Preview through a two-week free token offer, extending the launch’s emphasis on real-world testing beyond internal products.
Hy3 preview is now available via the following access (free access for a limited two-week period) : https://openrouter.ai/tencent/hy3-preview:free
