Yiketech announced the completion of US$500 million Series E financing: Sina Weibo led Zhao Liying as Vice President

Today, with the first snow in Beijing in 2016, the parent company of the second shot, Xiaocaxiu and a live broadcast held an E-round financing conference and announced the completion of 500 million US dollars of financing. Zhao Liying, a popular domestic star, was appointed vice president. This is the highest amount of a single round of financing in the history of technology financing, and at the same time, this round of financing has also set a record for the domestic mobile video industry.

original title: Sina Weibo led the investment of 120 million US dollars in the parent company's technology, and the two companies mingled only because of money?

Today, with the first snow in Beijing in 2016, the parent company of the second shot, Xiaocaxiu and a live broadcast held an E-round financing conference and announced the completion of 500 million US dollars of financing. Zhao Liying, a popular domestic star, was appointed vice president.

this is the highest amount of single round financing in the history of technology financing. At the same time, this round of financing has also set a record for the domestic mobile video industry.

500 million US dollars, which makes this conference feel like a local tycoon. Not to mention the press conference invited Jia Nailiang, Ren Quan and other stars, but also invited CCTV host sa Beining to do the live host, as well as Sequoia Capital partners, Weiying capital CEO and so on.

the list of luxury shareholders includes not only Sina Weibo, which leads the investment, but also Shanghai Radio and Television Station, Shanghai Media Group's (SMG) industrial investment fund, Light Control-minute New Industry Investment Fund, Weiying era, Phoenix Investment, Shangcheng Capital, Le Tou, Axlom Asia and so on.

when technology D-round raised money, Sina Weibo was also among them. A few days ago, Weibo filed with SEC that the company had invested $120 million in technology. Weibo also disclosed in the document that so far, Weibo has accumulated $190 million in investment in science and technology.

before the E round of financing, Sina Weibo held a stake of 18% in Miakei, making it the second largest shareholder. Just as there are Internet giants behind many mobile apps, some people jokingly call Sina Weibo the "godfather" of technology.

but Sina Weibo is far more intimate than that.

the relationship between technology and Sina Weibo is more like a symbiosis. In addition to the capital binding, the three products of the following technology are also integrated with Sina Weibo, and even the two companies are highly strategically coordinated, and the company's top executives meet regularly every week.

it can be said that today, Sina Weibo may not be able to recover without technology, and technology without Sina Weibo cannot be called a unicorn.

such an intimate relationship is not just an investment relationship that can be bound.

strong > backed by Sina Weibo traffic, second shots, Xiaoxiu, and constant broadcasting have sprung up / strong >

, founded in 2011. It is a short video entertainment sharing application and mobile video technology service provider for China Mobile. But at that time, both the market environment and user habits were a bit too early for the short video platform.

take a look at the second shot of the first product of technology, which was lukewarm until 2014. It is also in this year, the United States shot a strong rise, Tencent's short video platform Weishi is also eager to try.

under the difficulties of internal and external affairs, Wang Gaofei, CEO of Sina Weibo, analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the second beat and the competitive products in the market at a meeting, and suggested that the second shot should focus on the operation and content before it could be surpassed.

after listening to this suggestion, the second beat seems to find its direction all of a sudden. "if we had done nothing for the first three years of our business, slept every day, and had done it again in 2014, we would have been where we are now." Han Kun's words sound helpless, but they reflect the reality of the second shot at that time.

by chance, there is an "ice bucket challenge". When Silicon Valley leaders spread videos of the "Ice Bucket Challenge", second shot quickly organized many stars to shoot videos with second shots and then forwarded them through Sina Weibo, attracting a large number of users.

it can be said that through Sina Weibo, second shot has accumulated its first batch of original users of short videos. Subsequently, Xiaoca show appeared and quickly became popular, and the technology quickly harvested the second "popular style".

and the popularity of "Xiaocaxiu" is mainly due to the promotion and spread of many stars on Sina Weibo. For example, stars such as Jia Nailiang and Jiang Xin posted almost all kinds of Xiaoka shows for a period of time.

it's not too much to call Sina Weibo an amulet of technology.

strong > with the help of short videos and live broadcasts, Sina Weibo began to recover, targeting China's youtube / strong >

. After the birth of continuous broadcasting, it joined second shots and Xiaoca shows to form a video ecological matrix under science and technology. While Sina Weibo provides users and traffic for second shots, Xiaoca shows and continuous broadcasting, the ecology of the technology video matrix formed by second shots, Xiaoxiu and constant broadcasting can also feed new content, attention and popularity for Sina Weibo.

in fact, around 2014, there was a time when rampant marketing accounts almost destroyed Sina Weibo. Due to the scarcity of content, these marketing accounts have indeed accumulated a number of fans for Weibo, but as their content is homogenized, and their fans are filled with tens of thousands of machine and zombie fans, forming a marketing number matrix, the impact on Weibo has deteriorated a bit.

but after the rise of short videos, Weibo seems to have suddenly found a product form that suits the tone of its own channel, as well as a "lifesaver". Sina Weibo bought a stake in technology, with a stake of 18%. Through this capital relationship, the three products of technology, namely, short video, continuous broadcast and Xiaocaxiu, all open accounts with Sina Weibo.

in August this year, Sina Weibo disclosed its second-quarter results, showing that the number of monthly active users reached 282 million, especially the number of mobile users increased by 40%. The number of short and live video users in this field is growing rapidly. This is the first time that Sina Weibo has mentioned several product data of science and technology in its financial results.

in the second quarter, there were more than 10 million live broadcasts, with an average daily viewing time of 7.73 million in June and an average daily viewing time of 387000 hours. the average daily viewing volume of short videos reached 1.57 billion, an increase of 235% over the previous quarter. Weibo is expected to become the largest platform for short video creation and consumption in China.

in August, Morgan Stanley maintained its "overweight" rating on Sina Weibo and sharply raised its target price to $40 from $30. Morgan Stanley believes that with the launch of short videos and live streaming products, Weibo has finally entered the new market of 600-700m users. In the long run, it will have a strong ability to realize commercial cash, so it will certainly promote the substantial growth of Weibo revenue.

in this way, backed by the three products of technology, Sina Weibo seems to have come back to life again. At present, Sina Weibo is transforming from "picture and text sharing" to "short video sharing", bringing a huge dividend period for content entrepreneurs as Weibo changes from China's Twitter to China's YouTube.

strong > behind the technology is the Weibo relationship chain / strong >

now, the Sina live broadcast logo that often appears on Sina Weibo besides being broadcast all the time. Xiao Yu asks a senior member of science and technology whether Sina is starting to do its own live broadcast. The executive said that the live broadcast with the Sina logo is also a team that has been broadcasting all the time.

it is also extremely rare for two companies to be able to win-win each other and stick together seamlessly. According to industry insiders, the close relationship between the two companies can be described in this way: Zipai is more and more like a division or a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sina Weibo.

the close binding between the two sides, in addition to Sina Weibo providing huge traffic portal support for the three products of technology, or the products of technology driving the activity of Sina Weibo users, there is also synergy at the capital level.

Technology completed $25 million in round B financing in 2013, led by Sina Weibo, followed by Redpoint Ventures and Morningside Venture Capital, and in 2014, Technology completed another $50 million round C financing, of which Sina followed. According to an industry insider, not surprisingly, this should be the last round of financing for technology. In this round, Sina Weibo still led the investment of 120 million US dollars. According to the financial results released by Sina Weibo, the cumulative investment in technology is 190 million US dollars.

more importantly, there is a high degree of strategic coordination between Sina Weibo and science and technology.

the positioning of Sina Weibo has been changing over the years. It was defined as a media attribute around 2013, later defined as a social attribute, and now as a media + social attribute. But no matter how the positioning changes, Sina Weibo has found that videos, especially short videos, have become more suitable content for Sina Weibo to spread.

an industry insider pointed out that behind the technology is the Weibo relationship chain, and what is broadcast and cut all the time is star live content, which has high requirements for CPU.

in order to strategically support technology. In 2014, when the competition between second shot and Meipai was the fiercest, Sina Weibo even blocked Meipai's function of sharing links; immediately after it was born, it was positioned as the official live broadcast platform of Sina Weibo. Only live streaming on Sina Weibo will start continuous broadcasting.

in Han Kun's view, Tech attaches more importance to Weibo's strategic support than Sina Weibo's various advertising resources and list recommendations.

according to the pace of scientific and technological development, senior management has to put forward two major strategies every year, and these strategies have been discussed with Sina Weibo. Han Kun said in an interview that high-tech executives meet with Sina Weibo executives every week to discuss various development strategies.

with a high degree of coordination among product, capital and strategy, the relationship between Sina Weibo and Tech will continue to be in the "honeymoon period" in the future.

Edit: yvette