Weibo invests US$120 million in technology and continues to launch live broadcasts

Weibo's filing with the SEC on the 18th showed that the company invested US$120 million in technology. Weibo also disclosed in the document that as of now, Weibo has invested a total of US$190 million in Xiwu technology. However, Weibo did not disclose the specific shareholding ratio.

Original title: Weibo invests US$120 million in a live broadcast parent company.

Weibo filed a document with the SEC on the 18th showing that the company invested US$120 million in technology. Weibo also disclosed in the document that as of now, Weibo has invested a total of US$190 million in Xiwu technology. However, Weibo did not disclose the specific shareholding ratio.

According to public information, Xiashuo Technology was established in August 2011. It owns three major brands: Short Video platform Second Shot, Live APP First Live Broadcast, and Funny Imitation APP Little Coffee Show. Xiashang Technology has successively received investments from Morningside, Red Dot, KPCB, Weibo and Star VC.

In November 2015, Ibidtech announced that it had completed a US$200 million Series D financing led by Weibo and followed by Sequoia Capital China Fund and South Korea's YG Entertainment. Ibidtech said that after the completion of this round of financing, the company has been valued at US$1 billion.

You can see Weibo in the B/C/D round of financing for technology. The development of technology to this day is largely due to the support of Weibo resources. Star investors such as Star VC (Huang Xiaoming, Li Bingbing, Ren Quan, etc.) also added a lot of exposure to the early Niexiang and Xiaokaixiu products.

In turn, second shots also help increase the activity of Weibo users. On August 9, Weibo announced its financial report showing that Weibo's net profit for the second quarter of this year was US$35.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 225%. On August 16, the market value of Weibo exceeded US$10 billion for the first time. Cao Guowei, chairman of Weibo, once said: "Weibo's users continue to grow, which is mainly due to our effective construction of channels for user popularization and penetration, and our optimization of user experience through the consumption of Short Video and real-time content on Weibo platform."

On May 13 this year, Weibo and Yixia Technology jointly launched the first strategic product, Yixia Live Broadcast. During the trial operation phase alone, stars such as Huang Xiaoming, Zhou Xun, and Ying Cai 'er entered a live broadcast. At the press conference that morning, Jia Nailiang was hired as the chief creative officer of "One Live Broadcast". However, due to the late broadcast, although many stars and bigwigs have been invited to help out, and Weibo resources have also been strongly supported, according to several latest Mobile Live Video Broadcasting industry research reports, Yibo currently has a market share. It still lags far behind Yingke and YY, which have been ranked among the top for a long time, and is still in the second tier.

Editor: Nancy