Tencent’s biggest investments in 2017

Chinese social and gaming giant Tencent had another blockbuster year. Its market capitalization skyrocketed from around US$200 billion to almost half a trillion dollars over the course of 2017 – even surpassing Facebook’s valuation at one point.

A fair bit of that moolah – though less than last year – went to startups. Here are 10 of Tencent’s largest investments in 2017 (note: these funding rounds include input from other investors, not just Tencent).

1. Meituan-Dianping

• Funding round: US$4 billion
• Country: China

Meituan-Dianping is a Yelp-like platform that lets users order food, book events, and cash in on group-buying deals. The company’s services are hooked into WeChat, one of Tencent’s most popular social apps.

According to sources at Reuters, Meituan-Dianping is considering an initial public offering of at least US$3 billion in the US next year.

WeChat’s sprawling ecosystem includes a wide range of different businesses, such as ride hailing, ticket booking, and food delivery. These embedded services, including those offered by Meituan-Dianping, give priority to WeChat Pay, the superapp’s payment system.

Ant Financial’s payment system Alipay is the leading mobile wallet in China, but WeChat Pay has made considerable gains since launching in 2014. Together, they account for about 90 percent of China’s mobile payment market.

See: How WeChat Pay became Alipay’s largest rival

2. NIO

• Funding round: US$1.6 billion (two rounds)
• Country: China

Previously known as NextEV, NIO is one of China’s rising electric car startups. Also backed by Baidu, NIO is part of the Chinese titan’s Apollo platform, where self-driving car data and technology is shared between automobile and tech companies.

This year, NIO announced it would develop fully autonomous cars by 2020. In June, the company’s investment arm, NIO Capital, led a US$46 million round for Momenta, a Beijing-based self-driving car software startup.

3. Flipkart

See: How the latest $1.4b Flipkart funding changes the ecommerce game in India

4. Ola

See: What SoftBank’s $10b investment in Uber means for its battle with Ola in India

5. Vipshop

6. Mobike

7. Yixin Group

8. Kuaishou

9. Zhuan Zhuan

10. Haodaifu Online