Sony Pays $400 Million for Shares of China’s Bilibili, Joining Tencent and Alibaba as Strategic Investors

Chinese video sharing website Bilibili received $400 million in strategic investment from Sony and will further collaborate with the Japanese conglomerate in areas including animation and video games, it announced on Thursday.

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Under the agreement, Sony will subscribe for 17,310,696 class Z newly issued common shares of Bilibili for $23.1071 per share through a wholly owned subsidiary. The whole transaction will amount to $400 million.

Bilibili chairman and CEO Chen Rui said in a statement, “The strategic investment and business cooperation further align our goals to bring best-in-class content offerings and services to our users, as we increase our domestic stronghold in animation and mobile games.”

The two companies have a long history of business cooperation in animation, games, music and other areas of entertainment. Since 2014, Bilibili and Aniplex, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony, have worked together in purchasing animation copyright. The Chinese video site also formed cooperation with Sony Music recently that allows its users to watch music videos owned by Sony Music.

Before Sony, Tencent and Alibaba became Bilibili’s strategic investors in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Tencent’s 12.6% stake makes it Bilibili’s second largest shareholder, Alibaba with it’s 7.2% stake in the company is the fourth largest shareholder. Sony will hold roughly 4.98% of the company’s shares through its subsidiary.