Original title: Kwai almost completed about $450 million F round of financing, from fast Baidu joint investment 36 krypton
Baidu investment knows Kwai Chi has been the largest financing ever.
Sihai: Kwai has completed about $450 million in F round of financing, and the current round of financing is invested by Baidu and fast forward, which is the largest amount of financing so far.
A person close to the transaction told 36 krypton that Suhua had been "in love" for a long time and wanted to participate in previous rounds, but the two sides had failed to reach an agreement due to price and other factors. It is reported that the transaction has also been controversial in the fast investment department, but Kwai Kwai's top hand has strong willingness to push it, and ultimately contributed to the investment.
A person close to Baidu disclosed to 36 krypton that after this round of financing, Zhihu Q & A may access Baidu app in the form of intelligent applet to realize business linkage, which will undoubtedly greatly enrich Baidu's content ecology.
It is noteworthy that Baidu is also one of Kwai's investors. Baidu Kwai Kwai has kits, which is rich in Baidu's content sources in short video ecology. Baidu and Kwai Fu and the just investment have formed a triangle relationship: Baidu is responsible for platform type traffic entrance, and fast hand provides short video content ecology.
In response to the financing, 36 krypton informed Kwai, Baidu and Baidu officials, and the three companies declined to comment.
This is not too long from the last round of financing: last August, 36 krypton exclusively reported that Zhihu completed the e round of financing of US $270 million, with a valuation of US $2.5 billion.
At the beginning of this year, an investor close to Zhihu disclosed to 36 krypton that Zhihu intended to be listed again in 2019. In the past year, the course of Zhihu has been quite ups and downs. According to the Beijing News, Zhihu is carrying out a round of large-scale layoffs, and the scale has even risen to 700. In response, Zhihu responded that the number and proportion of personnel optimization were within the normal range, and 700 people were extremely exaggerated false news.
Then, Zhou Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zhihu, issued a letter to the whole staff, announcing that Zhihu would carry out a new round of organizational structure adjustment. The company also appointed Sun Wei, the former Miya CFO, as the new CFO. It is speculated that various measures directly point to its preparation for listing.
The external discussion on the commercialization of Zhihu has not stopped. Although the formal commercialization began in 2017, mainly exploring the two revenue models of advertising and knowledge services, Zhou Yuan revealed that in the last announcement of the e-round financing, the revenue of commercial advertising increased by 340% in the first half of 2018 compared with the same period last year, and Zhihu university has provided more than 15000 knowledge service products.