Tencent Launches Hy4: Vision, Computer Use, and a Careful Open-Source Promise

Key takeaway: Tencent launched Hy4, its new Hunyuan large language model, on November 4, 2026, adding vision and computer use for the first time and claiming a place among the world’s leading open-source models. The catch: the model weights are promised for “the coming days,” not yet released, so for now Hy4 is available only through Tencent’s own apps and APIs.

Tencent announced Hy4 on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, as the full version of the model it previewed in August 2026. The company says Hy4 is a significant step up in performance and that, for the first time, its Hunyuan model ranks among the world’s leading open-source models. That ranking claim is Tencent’s own: independent benchmarks for the full version will take time to appear.

Hy4 is available now across Tencent Cloud TokenHub, WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy, Yuanbao, WeCom’s AI Assistant (Dayuan), and ima, and developers outside China can call it through OpenRouter. Tencent’s announcement, carried by PR Newswire, says Hy4 Flash — a faster, cheaper version — is scheduled for release soon.

What is new in Tencent Hy4?

Two capabilities are new, and both matter more than a benchmark bump. First, vision: Hy4 can interpret fine-grained image details, complex charts, and mathematical problems presented as images, combining perception, reasoning, and tool use. Second, computer use: it can operate across command-line and graphical interfaces to carry out multi-step tasks.

Tencent also says Hy4 improves instruction following, long-text understanding, long-horizon task execution, and deep research, and that it significantly expanded pre-training and post-training scale over the preview. In a financial crowd-test run with Tencent Financial Technology, 213 experts judged 579 real financial tasks; Tencent reports Hy4 scored 3.04 overall, ahead of Kimi K3.1 Pro (2.68), GLM-5.3 (2.68), and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 (2.97). That test is Tencent-run, so treat it as the company’s evidence, not an independent verdict.

Hy4 vs. the August preview: what actually changed

Feature	Hy4 preview (August 2026)	Hy4 full version (November 4, 2026)
Vision	No	Yes — images, charts, visual maths
Computer use	No	Yes — command-line and graphical interfaces
Weights	Released under Apache 2.0	Planned, not yet released
API pricing	About $0.90 / $2.70 per million input / output tokens	Unchanged
Availability	Hosted APIs and apps	Hosted APIs and apps, plus OpenRouter

What Hy4 costs and how to try it

API pricing is unchanged from the preview: approximately $0.90 per million input tokens, $2.70 per million output tokens, and $0.045 per million cached input tokens. Two launch offers lower the barrier to trying it: WorkBuddy and CodeBuddy are free from November 4 to 15, and Hy4 is 50% off its standard pricing on Tencent Cloud TokenHub through December 31, 2026.

The practical prerequisite is simple: you do not need to install anything. Because the weights are not out yet, every request goes through Tencent’s API or a partner platform such as OpenRouter, where Hy4 currently has only Tencent Cloud as a provider and a context window of about 1 million tokens. If you need to run a model on your own servers, or inspect its weights, Hy4 is not yet that model — the August preview is the downloadable one.

How Tencent is handling the safety question

Hy4 arrives amid rising concern about AI-assisted cyberattacks. According to Reuters’ report on the launch, Tencent trained Hy4 with cybersecurity data limited to defensive content — such as finding software flaws and helping fix them — and filtered out material such as exploit development, reverse engineering, and penetration testing to limit its offensive capability. Tencent also says it is emphasising cybersecurity and biological safety across training, open-sourcing, and release, and that the full system card with safety evaluations will arrive with the weights.

This follows a pattern among Chinese AI firms: Moonshot AI limited the cyber-offensive capabilities of its newest model last month, as companies on both sides of the Pacific move to show restraint on the most dual-use capabilities. The context is worth noting for readers following China’s broader AI rules — Beijing is also speeding up a full-lifecycle AI law announced this week.

What is confirmed, what is unknown, and what to watch

Known: Hy4 launched November 4, 2026, with vision and computer use, unchanged API pricing, launch discounts, and a promised Hy4 Flash. Unknown: the release date and licence for the full weights, the contents of the system card, and how Hy4 scores on independent benchmarks. What to watch: the weights and system card landing on Hugging Face, independent benchmark runs, and whether Hy4 Flash delivers the promised price-performance jump.

Analysis: a launch that is half a promise

Hy4’s honest headline is not “open-source model released” but “strong hosted model released, open release pending.” Tencent deserves credit for saying plainly that a large gap remains between Hy4 and the top closed models, especially on its hardest internal tests. But until the weights and system card actually appear, the “open-source” label is forward-looking, not current fact — and anyone repeating it without that qualifier is getting ahead of the evidence. The more interesting question is what the weights release, when it lands, reveals about how far behind the closed frontier Hy4 really is. That is also why this launch sits alongside this week’s other agent-security news, including CrowdStrike’s AI kill switch: the industry is racing to make agents more capable and more controllable at the same time.

Bottom line: Try Hy4 today through Yuanbao, WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy, or OpenRouter if you want its new vision and computer-use skills. Wait for the weights if you want to run it yourself — and judge the “leading open model” claim only once independent tests are in.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tencent Hy4?

Hy4 is Tencent’s new Hunyuan large language model, launched on November 4, 2026. It adds vision and computer use for the first time and is available through Tencent’s apps, Tencent Cloud TokenHub, and OpenRouter.

Is Hy4 open source yet?

Not yet. Tencent says it plans to release the model weights and a system card in the coming days, with support from the vLLM and SGLang communities. Until those files appear, Hy4 can only be used through hosted APIs and apps, not downloaded and run locally.

What can Hy4 do that the preview could not?

Hy4 can interpret images, complex charts, and visual maths problems, and it can operate a computer across command-line and graphical interfaces. Tencent also reports improvements in instruction following, long-text understanding, long-horizon tasks, and deep research.

How much does Hy4 cost?

API pricing is about $0.90 per million input tokens, $2.70 per million output tokens, and $0.045 per million cached input tokens. WorkBuddy and CodeBuddy are free from November 4 to 15, 2026, and Hy4 is 50% off on Tencent Cloud TokenHub through December 31, 2026.

How is Tencent limiting Hy4’s misuse risk?

Tencent says it limited cybersecurity training data to defensive content and filtered out exploit development, reverse engineering, and penetration testing material, with a focus on cybersecurity and biological safety. A full system card with safety evaluations is due with the weights release.