Toutiao to invest in Cheetah Mobile's Live.me and buy News Republic

Cheetah Mobile's booth at an expo in Beijing, April 30, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

China's internet and mobile app publisher, Cheetah Mobile Inc, announced Wednesday it has entered a strategic cooperation agreement with Beijing Bytedance Technology Co Ltd, which owns Jinri Toutiao, a leading news aggregator app, on personalized content and social live streaming.

According to the agreement, Toutiao will invest $50 million in the series B funding round of live streaming platform Live.me, a subsidiary of Cheetah Mobile, Beijing Business Today reported.

Toutiao will also acquire News Republic, a news aggregator platform of Cheetah Mobile, for $86.6 million.

Cheetah Mobile CEO Fu Sheng said, "The strategic cooperation can help both sides speed up their development in the global market." Toutiao's investment will help Live.me grow in live streaming and short videos. Meanwhile, Toutiao will recommend Live.me in its overseas products, Fu added. 

Toutiao's founder and CEO Zhang Yiming said, "We are glad to become a cooperative partner of Cheetah Mobile. Through the acquisition of News Republic, we'll obtain quality content from famous media cooperative partners in the world, making a great stride in globalization strategy. It can also help us touch more overseas markets and provide more diversified content services for global users."

Cheetah Mobile has nearly 600 million monthly active users, among which 80 percent come from overseas market. The Beijing-based company provides security and optimization software used both in smartphones and PCs. Its apps such as Clean Master and Battery Doctors are popular on the internet.

Toutiao, which literally translates into "Today's Top Headlines," was founded in 2012 and has more than 600 million active users. Toutiao began to explore the international market in 2015 and has expanded its reach to Japan, India, Brazil, North America and Southeast Asia. In February, it acquired Flipagram, a US video creation app.