Tencent-backed news app Qutoutiao nabs $171M from Alibaba
Summary
The race to give Chinese users their daily dose of news intensifies as Qutoutiao, a rival to TikTok parent ByteDance, net an installment of sizable backing. The Shanghai-based company is among a handful of startups alongside e-commerce challenger Pinduoduo that are piling into the largely untapped, smaller cities outside China’s major urban centers of Beijing and Shanghai for growth. The fresh capital will make Qutoutiao one of the unusual Chinese tech startups with backings from both Alibaba and Tencent, the arch-foes that compete in many realms. ByteDance runs an empire of popular new media products that include short-form video app Douyin and news distribution platform Jinri Toutiao. TikTok, which is the international version of Douyin, is turning heads across the globe, including in the United States, and has reportedly spurred a Facebook clone.
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