The injection of wealth from China’s biggest social network and online entertainment company brings the start-up’s valuation to US$1 billion, Kik said in a statement Monday.
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Canada-based Kik plans to use the money to double its workforce to 200 employees over the next year, including substantial hiring in Los Angeles, as it seeks to emulate Tencent’s success in China connecting consumers and companies through chat.
In Kik, Tencent invested in a company that has 200 million subscribers to its Kik Messenger app as well as various games and a music-streaming service that could further lure in users. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with them as we run this race.
In a Medium article last November, Kik CEO Ted Livingston wrote that for WeChat users “there is no such thing as offline”, and proclaimed his ambition to develop Kik into “the WeChat of the West”. “That has always been our vision, but Tencent had already made it real”. The app is available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone operating systems free of charge.
Kik’s attempt to become “The WeChat Of The West” has been bolstered by a $50 million infusion from WeChat’s Chinese developer Tencent. As a newly minted “unicorn” – a popular term for a startup valued at $1-billion or more – Kik joins the ranks of other Canadian tech darlings like Shopify, Hootsuite and Avigilon according to data compiled by Garibaldi Capital Advisors. Beside Snapchat and Facebook’s two messaging services, WhatsApp and Messenger, there is also the American chat app Tango, which counts Alibaba as a lead investor.
“We’re really looking forward to working closely with them”, he said in an interview. The only question was who. Kik was forced to devise a new strategy based on building a platform for services around its core chat function.
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Not surprisingly, these apps are most popular among a younger crowd: 49 percent of smartphone-owning adults ages 18-29 use messaging apps, Pew found, and 41 percent of that group uses “auto-delete”/ephemeral messaging apps like Snapchat.
