What Bilibili stakes reveal about Alibaba’s and Tencent’s content strategies

Alibaba announced in February that its e-commerce subsidiary Taobao acquired 24 million shares (an 8% stake) of Chinese online video platform Bilibili. Last October, Tencent increased its own investment in Bilibili to around 12%. Bilibili is renowned for its content in anime, comics, and games, and offers mobile games from third parties.

Alibaba and Tencent are both eager to win over emerging Generation Z consumers—those born between 1995 and the early 2000s. According to Bilibili’s third quarter earnings release, the Nasdaq-listed company boasted 92.7 million monthly active users, around 82% of which were born between 1990 and 2009.

Alibaba and Tencent have tapped into such video platforms looking to create synergies for their core business.

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