Alibaba Sinks $215 Million Into Messaging App Tango, Valuing It At More Than $1 Billion
China’s Alibaba is the latest Internet giant to make a bet on the messaging space, and it’s a big one. The company is spending $215 million for a minority stake in the messaging and free-calling app Tango, the startup revealed today.
The investment is part of a $280 million funding round that Alibaba is leading, which also will see other current investors in Tango stump up more capital.
The round values Tango at $1.1 billion, based on a regulatory filing sourced by research firm VC Experts, who estimate that Alibaba’s stake lies somewhere between 20 and 25%. Two people close to the deal confirmed the estimate.
Tango, based in Mountain View, Calif., would not comment on its valuation or the size of Alibaba’s stake.
http://www.forbes.com/
Related Posts
70
In a taxi, workshops, banking halls, under tree shades, name it – you cannot miss seeing someone on Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Kik or Whatsapp, thanks to the increasing popularity of internet-enabled phones and smartphones. Evidence can be found in the news of the planet. Informa Telecoms & Media has predicted…
Tags: telecom, messaging, trend, billion
55
Thanks to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) 2014 report on Cities of Opportunity, job seekers have a handy list of some of the best cities to find a job across the world. Using 10 indicators to look at the factors that contribute to a well-balanced city, the study compared 30 different cities and…
Tags: based, trend
54
We caught up with billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban during South by Southwest Interactive in Austin. Our first question: what apps does the "Shark Tank" star and Dallas Mavericks owner have on his smartphone? Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-13-apps-phone-2014-3#ixzz2wLaru5Rl
Tags: trend
53
Uber’s global expansion has exploded bringing the service to 74 cities since the start of 2011 – the ride-hailing app added 13 new cities in just the first 50 days of 2014 alone – and spearheading this rapid growth are a crack team known as launchers. Described as a blend…
Tags: app, trend
52
KPCB’s Mary Meeker presents the 2015 Internet Trends report, 20 years after the inaugural “The Internet Report” was first published in 1995. Since then, the number of Internet users has risen from 35 million in 1995 to more than 2.8 billion today. The 2015 report looks at key Internet trends…
Tags: trend
The alternative currency has been plagued by hacks, ponzi schemes and increasingly professional thefts since 2011, explains Alex Hern
Sometimes it seems like not a week goes by without news of some bitcoin service getting hacked and losing everything.
Thankfully, such attacks are rarer than that. But given the size of the bitcoin economy, they are still far, far more common than they have any right to be. A look at the history of bitcoin hacks is a look at the history of bitcoin itself, from its beginnings all the way to the genesis of the professionalised second generation of firms we’re seeing now.
In the interests of fairness, we haven’t covered the black market. While the disappearance of sites like Sheep and Silk Road took a lot of bitcoins with them, that says more about what happens if you dabble in drug dealing than cryptocurrencies overall.
http://www.theguardian.com/
Related Posts
82
With the price of bitcoin seemingly on the up and up, there’s no shortage of conversation on the topic of where the price goes from here. There’s seemingly no shortage of optimism, either, with the value of bitcoin up a whopping 18 percent in the past week. Hedge fund Laureate BVI is…
Tags: bitcoin, currency
81
The website of Mt. Gox appears to be taken down, shortly after six major Bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement distancing themselves from the troubled Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange. Mt. Gox's homepage was not loading, although no error message appeared. Mt. Gox was not immediately available for comment. "This tragic violation…
Tags: bitcoin, currency
80
Who cares about Satoshi Nakamoto? Someone else has made Bitcoin what it is and has the most power over its destiny. In March, a bewildered retired man faced journalists yelling questions about virtual currency outside his suburban home in Temple City, California. Dorian Nakamoto, 64, had been identified by Newsweek as the…
Tags: bitcoin, currency
80
The price of the digital currency bitcoin slid to its lowest level in nearly two months on Monday after bitcoin digital marketplace Mt. Gox said a halt on withdrawals it announced on Friday would continue indefinitely after it detected "unusual activity." http://www.reuters.com
Tags: bitcoin, currency
78
Mark Karpeles, chief executive of Mt. Gox, the embattled Toyko-based bitcoin exchange, resigned on Sunday from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, in the latest blow to the digital currency. Jinyoung Lee Englund, a spokesperson for the Bitcoin Foundation - a trade group promoting the adoption of the digital currency,…
Tags: bitcoin, currency, news
Forex and other trading news