Kuaishou, a Chinese live-streaming app backed by Tencent, Baidu and Sequoia, is said to be in talks to raise money at a USD 25 billion valuation, 38.9% higher than the USD 18 billion in an earlier fundraising round, said people familiar with the discussions.
Kuaishou, which features short videos of China’s working class and farmers broadcasting snippets of their own lives, is competing against apps like ByteDance Technology’s Douyin, also called TikTok. The current proposed valuation is still much lower than Bytedance’s valuation of USD 75 billion.
The fundraising is the latest shot in a multibillion-dollar arms race among Chinese video-streaming apps. Fierce competition will force players to grab market share and channel partners first, at the costs of heavy investment.
Source: The Information