Sina Corp (新浪), owner of China’s third-most popular Web site, paid US$66.4 million for a stake in Tudou Holdings Ltd (土豆) to boost its investments in online video services.
Sina acquired 1.075 million American depositary receipts (ADRs) at Shanghai-based Tudou’s initial public offering (IPO) in the US this month for US$31.2 million, it said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchanges Commission on Monday.
Sina spent US$35.2 million for an additional 1.49 million Tudou ADRs after the listing, taking the total holding to 9.05 percent, according to the filing.
Sina is adding video, social networking and electronic commerce services to attract users in the world’s biggest Internet market. The investment in Tudou, China’s second-biggest video Web site, follows Sina’s acquisition of a minority stake in online apparel retailer Mecox Lane Ltd this year.
Tudou is open to “strategic business cooperation in multiple areas” with Sina, it said in an e-mailed statement today.
Sina’s investment is “financial” in nature, Tudou said.
Sina, based in Shanghai, said in May it planned to spend US$100 million to develop its Weibo microblogging service to attract social-networking users.
Tudou has declined about 11 percent in trading on the NASDAQ stock market since its US$174 million IPO.
Tudou ADRs rose 2.5 percent to US$25.73 in US trading on Monday, compared with their IPO price of US$29. The company said it planned to use proceeds from its listing to acquire video content and upgrade technology, as competition with Youku.com Inc (優酷) intensifies.
Tudou founder and CEO Gary Wang (王微) had his stake in the video company cut to 8.6 percent from 12.7 percent following the IPO, according to Tudou’s prospectus.
Tudou’s site offers movies, TV series and content it produces, as well as user-generated videos like those found on Google Inc’s YouTube.
Tudou accounted for 14 percent of online video advertising revenues in China at the end of June, compared with 17 percent at the end of last year, while Youku gained 2 percentage points to 23 percent and Sohu.com Inc’s video site jumped to 13 percent from 7.9 percent, according to data from Analysys International.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to