The company behind WeChat just blasted past Alibaba to become China’s biggest tech giant

Jack Ma, Alibaba’s billionaire founder, can take heart from the fact that he’s still China’s richest techie. Photo modified by Tech in Asia; original photo credit: UN Climate Change.

There was a changing of the order overnight as Alibaba was dethroned from its position as China’s most valuable tech company.

Squeaking ahead is Tencent, maker of the popular WeChat app. A strong rise in Tencent’s shares in the past two years has just led to it surpassing Alibaba. Tencent is now worth US$247.6 billion, just ahead of US$238.7 billion for Jack Ma’s ecommerce juggernaut.

Investors reacted warmly to Tencent’s Q2 earnings report, published yesterday, in which the nation’s social media titan saw revenue soar at its fastest rate in over three years. Its stock jumped six percent in Thursday trading, pushing the market cap past that of its arch-rival.

That’s despite China’s booming online shopping market where consumers will splurge US$899 billion this year.

Aside from strong financials, Tencent saw the number of active WeChat users grow to 806 million from 600 million last year.

Converted from Hong Kong dollars. Rate: US$1 = HK$7.75.

See more on Tencent and WeChat:

• How Tencent is taking over global gaming
• WeChat’s global expansion has been a disaster
• WeChat reaches 800m active users, but it’s close to the bamboo ceiling