China-based private equity firm Yunfeng Capital and private equity firm Silver Lake Capital have, together with additional investors, have paid $1.6bn to acquire a 5% stake in the Alibaba Group, news agency Reuters said today.
This followed Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital launching a CNY1bn ($157m) investment fund on 24 October to provide capital to cloud-computing companies and mobile application developers using Alibaba’s operating system. Alibaba founder Jack Ma was among Yunfeng’s backers when it was set up last year.
Alibaba’s Aliyun mobile operating system was officially launched in July, and is competing against western computing giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Google.
In September Silver Lake and investment firm DST Global said they were planning to invest in Alibaba along with Yunfeng and the Singapore government-backed investment company Temasek Holding.