Tencent
Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this February, has added over $118 million to the financing event. The current round total is now $367 million, according to a new SEC filing. The filing shows that Reddit is aiming to raise $500 million in this round.
The Series E, which came from investors such as Tencent, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, valued the firm at $6 billion, double its last valuation from two years ago.
Originally founded in 2005, Reddit has long existed on the nerdy side of the internet, where its text- and image-focused forums have devoted themselves to a wide variety of topics, everything from video games and GIFs to cute pets and cigarettes to Donald Trump and sports.
NuBank, a fintech based in São Paulo, Brazil, is valued at $25 billion as the fourth most valuable financial institution in Latin America and the largest digital bank in the world by the number of customers and app downloads.
The round was led by private and public investors including Singapore’s GIC, Whale Rock, and Invesco. Current investors Tencent, Dragoneer, Ribbit Capital, and Sequoia also participated in the round.
The Chinese gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. reported its net profit for the third quarter surged 89%, thanks to continued strength in its gaming revenue and better cost-efficiency. The Chinese group has a solid pipeline of new games waiting to be released, including a testing launch of a mobile version of League of Legends in Asia last month.
"I think Tencent's fintech focus has been on payment business, and it is quite prudent on lending; the stance is more in compliance with regulations (than rivals)," said Alex Liu, an analyst with China Renaissance.
The initial public offering for Jack Ma's Ant Group will raise some $34.4 billion and value the company at more than $310 billion after retail investors placed bids for a record $3 trillion.
Xiaomeng Lu, a senior technology analyst at Eurasia Group, said that Ant is also poised to benefit from the Chinese government's latest economic development plans, which are being drawn up this week. Lu noted that Ant faces tough competition inside China from rival Tencent, while potential regulatory pressure from countries like the United States could limit opportunities abroad.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India announced 118 Chinese mobile apps have been banned, as tensions between the two countries continue to rise.
Those on the list include several of Tencent's products including the hit video game PUBG Mobile and WeChat Work.
Previously the government had banned 59 of the most popular apps including TikTok over national security concerns.
A coalition of WeChat users in the US launched a legal challenge to the Trump administration, questioning its ban on the popular Chinese messaging app. The users claim the ban violates their constitutional rights and that the app became an essential digital service for millions of Chinese-Americans.
President Trump signed two executive orders, effective September 20, banning US transactions with WeChat, the app owned by Tencent Holdings, and ByteDance, the owner of the video app TikTok.
The US WeChat Users Alliance, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, claimed that the ban had been "issued in the midst of the 2020 election cycle, during a time when President Trump has made numerous anti-Chinese statements that have contributed to and incited racial animus against persons of Chinese descent — all outside of the national security context".
Tencent reported on Wednesday results. for the three months through to the end of June. that beat analyst expectations in one of the fastest revenue-growing quarters in two years.
The company is one of the targets of the executive order signed by President Donald Trump, prohibiting any transaction related to WeChat, the popular messaging app owned by Tencent.
Revenue from online games, which accounts for one-third of total sales, increased 40% in the second quarter, primarily driven by mobile games including Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite.