Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba has acquired a US$215 million minority stake in mobile messaging and social game platform Tango.
An additional US$65 million was provided by investors including Access Industries, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Qualcomm Ventures and Translink Capital in Tango’s latest funding round.
“Tango has exhibited tremendous growth because of its unique approach to combine free communications, social and content,” said Alibaba Group Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai in a statement. “We were simply blown away by the vision and quality of the team at Tango and believe they have a disruptive way of looking at the mobile and messaging opportunity.”
US-based Tango was founded by CEO Uri Raz and CTO Eric Setton in 2009. According to Setton, the company’s mobile messaging app has 200 million registered users and doubled MAU over the past year to 70 million. Tango also features over 30 third-party iOS and Android games on the company’s messaging and social gaming platform.
Hangzhou-based Alibaba has recently revealed plans to hold a US IPO, as well as launch a mobile games platform in China, led by a new Alibaba subsidiary that will focus on mobile games and digital entertainment.
The move by Alibaba follows the recent US$19 billion acquisition of mobile messaging app WhatsApp by social networking leader Facebook.
