China’s Tencent buys Malaysian streaming platform Iflix in a push into South East Asia

Chinese tech giant Tencent said on Thursday that it had purchased Malaysian video streaming platform Iflix’s “content, technology, and resources” in order to further grow its presence in Southeast Asia.

Tencent said in a statement that it had hoped to use Iflix’s catalogue of “international, local, and original content” to expand to Thailand’s video streaming service, WeTV which was launched last year.

A Tencent spokesperson declined to disclose the size of the agreement. However, U.S. entertainment media outlet Variety published news about it on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal that it was worth “several tens of millions of dollars”.

This would make the deal much smaller than the Malaysian startup’s $1 billion valuation which it had sought last year when it planned a public listing in Australia.

Iflix was not immediately available for comment. 

The purchase is part of Tencent’s efforts to capitalize on its 650 million users in the region, with its popular streaming platform Tencent Video having over 110 million paid subscribers at late March.

Reuters reported in June that Tencent was in early talks to become the largest shareholder of Chinese rival iQIYl. However, both firms declined to comment on the deal.