A Chinese fintech company has closed the biggest private tech funding round of all time, netting a whopping $5.8 billion ($US4.8 billion).
The enviable cash injection is in Ant Financial, an Alibaba-affiliate financial services company that is estimated to account for 58% of all online payments in China, as the Financial Times reports.
The company claims that its core offering Alipay reaches 450 million users.
The giant Series B round is said to value the tech company at $US60 billion, placing it among some of the highest valued private companies in the world.
The round is the largest ever investment in a tech company, easily surpassing Uber-rival Didi Kuaidi’s $US3 billion round.
Ant Financial is also said to be planning a public listing at some point in the near future, and president Eric Jing says the latest funding round is all about planning for the longer-term growth.
“The capital raised will allow us to invest in the infrastructure, such as cloud computing and risk control, that will underpin our long-term growth in rural and international markets,” Jing says.
The fintech startup was spun out of ecommerce powerhouse Alibaba in December 2014 and offers a range of financial services, including China’s most popular online payments platform.
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Denham Sadler is a former editor of StartupSmart. He was previously a journalist at the publication and has worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, the Saturday Paper and the ABC. In his spare time he likes puns and jaffles.
