What this is
Tencent Hunyuan HY4’s official release is now available through WorkBuddy. The model has climbed from No. 25 on the Agent leaderboard in preview form to No. 14, placing it behind only K3.1 Pro among Chinese domestic models. We note that HY4 delivers performance close to K3.1 Pro with roughly one-quarter of its parameter count. However, its official benchmark scores are not particularly strong and, judged on scores alone, remain in the middle tier.
Actual testing shows that HY4’s new visual capabilities can handle spatial reasoning, image creation and webpage replication, as well as invoke tools to complete game development. It took nine minutes to solve a visual reasoning problem and roughly one hour to develop a complex webpage, indicating that the model prioritizes completing the task over delivering results quickly.
Industry view
We believe HY4’s real significance lies not in how many leaderboard positions it has gained, but in the fact that smaller-parameter models are beginning to approach the capabilities of larger Chinese domestic models. This means that, as enterprises deploy AI assistants, model selection is shifting from “the strongest capabilities” toward an overall comparison of cost, speed and fit for the use case.
The risks are just as clear. HY4 makes detail errors on some tasks, produces 3D models that are barely usable and, when replicating games, exhibits deviations in character movements and scenery. Processing times range from several minutes to an hour. In high-frequency customer service or real-time collaboration settings, the cost of waiting could offset the model’s capability gains. Third-party leaderboards also fluctuate significantly, and the test samples focus mainly on programming and production tasks. They are therefore insufficient to prove that HY4 is equally leading in writing, analysis and long-running office work.
Impact on regular people
For enterprise IT: Chinese domestic models continue to close the gap with the first tier, giving procurement teams more room to compare options. Before deployment, however, teams still need to test the model against their own documents, code and workflows, because speed and detail stability matter more than a one-off demonstration.
For individual professionals: Unified work interfaces such as WorkBuddy are bringing image analysis, writing, programming and webpage creation together. They are better suited to longer-running tasks whose outputs can be checked than to everyday operations that require immediate feedback.
For the consumer market: Cheaper and more accessible Chinese domestic model capabilities may push office software and creative tools to add more autonomous execution features. At the same time, people must continue to review and verify generated content.