Chinese tech giant Tencent has revealed plans to step up investments in the European market in 2020, with an especial focus on Germany.
Li Shiwei, president of Tencent’s cloud business, said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt that the Shenzhen-headquartered tech giant plans to invest USD$10 billion in Europe in 2020, one third of which will be directed towards Germany.
According to Li Germany is “the most important market outside of China” for Tencent, which has a partnership with BMW in China and has situated its European headquarters in Frankfurt.
Tencent hopes to dramatically increase staff numbers at its Frankfurt offices from 20 at present, as well as win over a greater number of German companies as customers in future.
According to a recent report Tencent is the world’s second largest investor in tech unicorns after Sequoia Capital.
2019 saw Tencent dial back its investment deals significantly, with a 33% drop in deal numbers compared to 2018, and a decline of more than half in the investment sum from 72.7 billion yuan in 2018 to 34.3 billion yuan in 2019.
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