Tencent, the Chinese company behind the popular messaging platform WeChat, has built a more than $2bn stake in Snap, the California-based parent company of Snapchat, in a move that could see the groups collaborate on gaming and news.
In its latest quarterly filing, Snap said Tencent had built a position of 145.78m non-voting shares in recent months, equivalent to just over 12 per cent of the company’s basic stock and 10 per cent of its fully diluted share count.
“It’s an innovative company with a huge user base in western markets and we saw an opportunity between the two [companies] with news feed and mobile game publishing,” said Tencent.