There seems to be no stopping Alibaba from further investing in Silicon Valley as it aims to build up its mobile services.
Reuters reported that the Chinese e-commerce giant is investing up to USD200 million in Snapchat, a photo-messaging application owned by a four-year-old company.
Alibaba’s investment now values Snapchat at around USD15 billion, way more than the USD3 billion that Facebook dangled when it offered to buy the company in late 2013.
Snapchat, based in Los Angeles, allows more than 100 million users to send messages that disappear in seconds. It had sought further capital to expand its core service.
Alibaba and Snapchat have not issued an official statement regarding the investment and Reuters based its report on unnamed sources familiar with the deal.
Snapchat was developed by Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy and was released in September 2011.
According to Snapchat in May 2014, the app’s users were sending 700 million photos and videos per day, while Snapchat Stories content was being viewed 500 million times per day.