Alibaba has purchased an 8% stake in the Chinese online video platform Bilibili, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Bilibili is one of China’s top video streaming and entertainment platforms, with about 92 million monthly active users and 450 million page-views per day. Founded in 2009, it was listed on the NASDAQ last March. Alibaba’s Taobao e-commerce retail platform now owns 24 million shares.
“I believe our cooperation can further unleash Bilibili’s commercial potential. I hope our collaboration will bring the creativity of the young Chinese to the world,” said Jiang Fan, vice president of Alibaba Group and president of Taobao, according to Xinhua’s report Thursday. It also cited Bilibili CEO Chen Rui as saying that the enormous Taobao platform would help more people discover Bilibili content.
Alibaba’s investment comes on the heels of a deal struck with the platform in December to find new, interactive ways of connecting users to content creators and merchandise. Bilibili is particularly popular with post-’90s Generation Z users — a key demographic for content-driven e-commerce.
Alibaba rival Tencent is the second-largest shareholder of Bilibili, making the video platform one of China’s rare companies to have both tech giants as investors. In October, Tencent and Bilibili announced a partnership to mutually create and host more content in the anime, comics and games space.