<p>To examine heterogeneity in the internationalization of digital firms, we introduce the concept of “digital dampening”, which refers to the extent to which non-digital elements are integrated into a digital firm. We argue that digital dampening inhibits internationalization. We develop testable hypotheses about the international multihoming of smartphone apps from China and analyze rich data on 33,878 smartphone apps from 25,233 Chinese vendors on the Tencent app market. Our methodology leverages generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in conjunction with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to investigate how the digital dampening of Tencent apps influences their presence on Google Play, a foreign app market. The findings indicate that the digital dampening of Tencent apps is negatively associated with their presence on Google Play, particularly for apps that face weaker downloads compared to their rivals. Supplementary analyses shed light on post-internationalization metrics on Google Play and vendor-level extensive and intensive margins of internationalization. Further tests rule out plausible alternative explanations and verify sensitivity for GenAI usage. Overall, the study presents an alternative to the prevailing view of born-digital firms as inherently global, emphasizing that non-digital complementarities in the business model can hinder internationalization, particularly in those firms facing a weak domestic competitive position.</p>