Chinese search giant Baidu has acquired online security outsourcing company Anquanbao for an unknown sum. The startup has previously received several financing rounds from Northern Light Ventures, Beijing-based incubator Innovation Works, Alibaba and Tencent. The existing investors will exit after the transaction, which means that Anquanbao will become a fully-owned subsidiary of Baidu.
Anquanbao is a cloud-based software program that helps protect websites from security violations like malware and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Its product can be easily installed on any website to safeguard it against hackers and security violations.
The company has cooperated with AWS China to offer clients enterprise firewall services. Its customers include big names like SAE, Tencent Cloud, DNSPOD, 51DNS, and more.
Ma Jie, founder and CEO of Anquanbao, established the company in 2011 after working at China’s leading anti-malware service Rising for almost a decade. He also once worked as technology chief at Innovation Works.
After this deal, Baidu will push the cooperation between Anquanbao and Baidu Cloud to speed up website load times and protect them from a range of threats. In addition, Ma will be assigned head of Baidu’s cloud security unit.
The acquisition will bring Baidu’s share in domestic enterprise security market to nearly 30%, making it the largest player in this field. As China’s web security market warms up, CloudFlare is also poised to enter the Chinese market.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)