Chinese big data solutions provider MiningLamp Technology has closed a USD 300 million Series E round of financing, co-led by Chinese internet giant Tencent (HKG: 0700) and Singaporean investment firm Temasek, local tech media 36Kr reported on Friday. Tencent-backed short-video startup Kuaishou also participated in this round.
Proceeds of the new round will be used for product development, research, market expansion, and talent recruitment, according to 36Kr. MiningLamp will also cooperate with Temasek and Kuaishou on international business expansion and marketing.
“This capital injection will allow MiningLamp to speed up our clients’ transformation process to digitalization at a time that is full of uncertainty,” said Wu Minghui, MiningLamp’s founder and CEO. “We will focus on developing more products and services with core competence to sustain the rapid growth of the company.”
Founded in 2014, Beijing-based MiningLamp was spun off from Miaozhen Systems, an advertising analysis startup formed in 2006 by Wu and his classmates at Peking University. The company focuses on delivering customized big data solutions to governments and enterprises in industries including public security, digital cities, finance, logistics, and manufacturing.
The firm’s business analytics products are used by more than 200 companies included in the Fortune 500 list, including P&G, Coca Cola, LV, and China UnionPay.
The new round marks the fifth funding round that MiningLamp completed since its nearly RMB 100 million (USD 14.1 million) Series A in 2015. Tencent has led the company’s RMB 1 billion Series C round with Huaxing Growth Capital in April 2018, and the RMB 2 billion Series D financing in 2019. MiningLamp also completed a Series B round worth RMB 200 million led by Sequoia Capital China in August 2016.
Tencent’s investment in MiningLamp is one of the tech giant’s latest moves towards the big data sector. It has previously poured hundreds of millions of yuan in Eastern Jinxin, a Beijing-based high-tech company that specializes in big data products and solutions, in April 2019. It also led a USD 10 million investment in London-based SenSat in October, a startup that uses AI and big data to create digital representations of real-world locations.
36Kr is KrASIA’s parent company.