{"id":56100,"date":"2018-01-05T06:31:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T06:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=56100"},"modified":"2018-01-05T06:31:10","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T06:31:10","slug":"google-eyes-chinese-e-sports-market-with-120-million-investment-in-chushou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/google-eyes-chinese-e-sports-market-with-120-million-investment-in-chushou.html","title":{"rendered":"Google eyes Chinese e-sports market with $120 million investment in Chushou"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Google eyes Chinese e-sports market with $120 million investment in Chushou<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Alphabet Inc\u2019s (GOOGL.O) Google has led a $120 million investment in Chinese live-stream mobile game platform Chushou, the two companies said on Friday, as the U.S. firm eyes new inroads to China where its search engine is blocked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Founded in 2015, Chushou is an online e-sports platform where users can live stream their mobile phone games. The service has roughly 8 million streamers and 250,000 live streams a day, said the companies in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Google will help the Chinese firm expand its services to target more overseas viewers, it said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Live stream gaming platforms are a popular form of e-sports in China, part of a growing industry that involves competitive game play viewed by spectators. Google\u2019s YouTube launched a specialized service for live stream gamers in 2015, capturing a large chunk of the global market.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The companies did not reveal the size of Google\u2019s stake or the valuation of Chushou after the round.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The investment is Google\u2019s second-ever in a Chinese startup, as the search engine giant looks for new avenues into the Chinese market where its flagship search engine has been blocked by censorship authorities since 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The U.S. firm took a minority stake in Beijing-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Mobvoi in 2015 as part of a $75 million fundraising round.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Google\u2019s inability to access China\u2019s large population of young, tech-savvy internet users poses a challenge for the firm whose search engine has expanded to become the world\u2019s largest and most ubiquitous.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Last year the firm began targeting China as a potential market to expand its AI offerings. In December, it launched an artificial intelligence lab in China, and in May it held a Go match between its AI project Alpha Go and Chinese Go champion Ke Jie. The match was highly publicized in international media but was not widely covered in local media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Last month, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai also spoke at a high-profile event in China organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which oversees internet censorship in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">\u201cChushou has built an impressive platform, with a dedicated and quickly growing base of content creators and consumers, and smart expansion plans,\u201d said Frank Lin, who oversees corporate development for Google in North Asia, in the statement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Google said it joins existing investors Qiming Venture, Shunwei Capital and Alpha X Capital in the latest round.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-china-google-investment\/google-eyes-chinese-e-sports-market-with-120-million-investment-in-chushou-idUSKBN1EU0FJ<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/google-eyes-chinese-e-sports-market-with-120-million-investment-in-chushou.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google eyes Chinese e-sports market with $120 million investment in Chushou Alphabet Inc\u2019s (GOOGL.O) Google has led a $120 million investment in Chinese live-stream mobile game platform Chushou, the two companies said on Friday, as the U.S. firm eyes new inroads to China where its search engine is blocked. Founded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5527,6901,113551,15404,6650,3299],"class_list":["post-56100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-emerging-market-countries","tag-fixed-income-markets","tag-google-eyes-chinese-e-sports-market-with-120-million-investment-in-chushou","tag-it-services-and-consulting","tag-science","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}