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Doris Yu · · 1 min readAlibaba, Tencent halt talks of iQiyi acquisition from Baidu: report
The discussions, however, have been put on hold after Baidu demanded a valuation of around US$20 billion. Alibaba and Tencent are also facing stricter regulations after the Chinese government rolled out draft guidelines for internet giants.
Alibaba and Tencent operate their own video platforms Youku and Tencent Video, respectively.
ByteDance, the parent company of short-video platform TikTok, has also internally considered acquiring a controlling stake in the Netflix-like video platform, three sources told Reuters.
Iqiyi is valued at over US$16.4 billion, and search engine giant Baidu has a 56.2% stake in it. The video platform is yet to break even a decade since its inception, however, and it has showed drops in revenue and subscribers in its Q3 2020 earnings.
In April, the Beijing-based iQiyi was accused of fraud and inflating its financial numbers by Wolfpack Research, though it has said that its internal review found no proof to support the short-seller’s claims.
See also: Why these investment firms are backing Joyy despite Muddy Waters’ report
Baidu’s willingness to sell its stakes in iQiyi comes as it focuses on developing its AI and autonomous driving units.
Edited by Collin Furtado
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