Reddit With New Chinese Blood? Tencent is Now its Lead Investor

According to Bloomberg, American news feed website Reddit received $300 million in total in a new round of financing. Chinese tech giant Tencent, the parent company of China’s largest social network WeChat, is the lead investor, contributing half of the total financing.

The total market valuation of Reddit is expected to reach $3 billion after this round. Other investors include Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Tacit and Snoop Dogg.

Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

According to Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, Tencent’s advantages in video games are part of the reason the two companies work together. “Video games are one category that’s really popular on Reddit.” Steve told CNBC. He also believed that Tencent’s presence would help improve the quality of the website.

Tencent company (Image Source: Internet)

Tencent, however, is not the first Chinese tech giant that laid eyes upon Reddit. Bytedance, mother company of TikTok, was rumored to be interested in acquiring the company in 2016, however failed to strike deals with Advance Publications, major investor of Reddit.

Some Reddit users are concerned that adding Chinese blood to the website might result in a cleansing of anti-China comments in the Reddit community.

Reddit website (Image Source: Shutterstock)

Ever since it was founded in 2005 in Silicon Valley, Reddit is known for its online atmosphere of free speech, with user comments as its main product. Over the years it has become the fifth largest social website, ranking after Google, YouTube, Facebook and Amazon, with monthly active users of 330 million. However it has been blocked in China since last August due to inappropriate memes and discussion of censored issues.