What Chinese tech company is now bigger than Facebook and has a market cap of more than $529.9 billion? Hint:  it’s not Alibaba.

If you guessed Tencent, you’re not likely a resident of North America or Europe because this Chinese company is largely unknown outside of China and will surprise you by its size and growth.

Stock price doubled in past 12 months

Tencent’s growth is impressive. South China Morning Post reports that a $1,000 investment 13 years ago would now be worth $1 million.

The company this one of the world’s largest internet companies with extensive operations across many sectors according to Wikipedia:

Tencent is the world’s biggest investment corporation, one of the largest Internet companies, as well as the largest, best-performing and most valuable gaming and entertainment company in the world. Its many services include social networkmusicweb portalse-commercemobile gamesinternet servicespayment systemssmartphones, and multiplayer online games, which are all among the world’s biggest and most successful in their respective categories.

Mobile business foundation

Among its best-known subsidiaries are its WeChat messenger service and WePay payments app. With more than one billion mobile phones in China, it’s not surprising most of its revenue comes from mobile services.

Tencent has nearly one billion users of its messaging, social media, payments, games and publishing services.

Recent investments

To get an idea of the wide range and scale of Tencent’s operations,  here are a number of its most recent investments:

  • launched WeBank in 2015, China’s first internet bank
  • in 2016, acquired 84.46% of video game company SuperCell for $8.4 billion
  • founded Future Mobility in 2016, an electric car startup, with partners Foxconn and car dealer Harmony New Energy;  followed up with a 5% investment in Tesla for $1.78 billion
  • acquired a majority stake in China Music (2016)
  • in 2017 launched a news and search function in its WeChat  messaging service which now has 770 million users
  • opened  its own global gaming platform WeGame in April 2017, with 200 million active users and more than 4.5 billion downloads
  • purchased a 12% share of Snap in November 2017.

That’s a long list of savvy investments and partnerships and with third-quarter revenue growth of 61%, it demonstrates that Tencent  is a global force to be reckoned with.

You can read more about Tencent at Wikipedia and Bloomberg.