Tencent, the world's largest video game publisher, is competing to offer artificial intelligence tools with its domestic tech rivals including Alibaba, Baidu and ByteDance.

"We sustained healthy growth rates in 2025, as AI capabilities improved our ad targeting and supported more engagement with our games," CEO Ma Huateng said in a statement.

"Our highly resilient and cash generative core businesses provide us with the resources to fund our increasing investments in AI."

The Shenzhen-based company has recently branched out into the world of AI agents -- tools that execute real-life tasks such as sending emails or booking flights -- with its WorkBuddy app.

The tool, released this month, is a foray into an area some see as the technology's next frontier after chatbots such as ChatGPT.

On Wednesday, Tencent said net profit for 2025 came to 224.8 billion yuan ($32.6 billion), beating estimates of 221.9 billion yuan in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Tencent, which owns the developer of popular eSports including "League of Legends", also has sizeable operations in other sectors from cloud computing to entertainment.

So far Tencent has been seen as a cautious artificial intelligence player, although Ma recently vowed to increase investment in the sector, calling it "the only field worth investing in".

The company has sought in recent years to integrate AI into WeChat, the multifunctional app it operates that is widely used in China.

It has also been among the Chinese tech giants racing to take advantage of a surge in interest in the country in OpenClaw, an AI agent platform created by an Austrian programmer.

Tencent -- China's most valuable tech company by market capitalisation -- and its rivals are offering simplified installation and affordable coding plans to help users host OpenClaw agents on cloud servers.

The Financial Times reported this month that the White House was debating whether Tencent's investment in US and Finnish gaming groups pose a national security risk.

Discussions over its stakes in "Fortnite" creator Epic Games, Riot Games and Supercell centres around the implications for US user data privacy, the British newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Tencent did not respond to an AFP inquiry seeking comment on the report.