Google has added Chinese mobile game live streaming platform Chushou to its list of investments in Asia. The Beijing-based startup announced today that it has closed a Series D round, which Google joined as a new investor, that brings its total funding so far to over $120 million. Chushou’s previous investors Qiming Venture, Shunwei Capital and Alpha X Capital, also returned for this round.
Chushou did not disclose the size of the Series D, but its last round of funding, announced almost exactly one year ago, was $58 million and prior to that it had raised about $20 million. TechCrunch has learned that Chinese media reports last week, which put Chushou’s new round at 500 million RMB (about $77 million), weren’t accurate.
Google’s investments in Asia now span game live streaming (Chushou), artificial intelligence (Mobvoi, also in China), task outsourcing (India’s Dunzo) and hardware (HTC in Taiwan), while CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), the late-stage growth fund owned by Google parent company Alphabet, has backed high-speed optical transceiver manufacturer Innolight in China and several Indian startups, including Practo, Commonfloor and Cuemath.
In a press statement, Frank Lin, Google’s principal of corporate development in north Asia, said “Chushou has built an impressive platform, with a dedicated and quickly growing base of content creators and consumers, and smart expansion plans. We’re excited to be supporting Chushou through this investment to help them execute those plans, bringing great mobile gaming content to more people around the world.”
Launched in August 2015, Chushou says it now has more than eight million unique streamers, with on average 250,000 streamers live streaming each day. About 90 million gamers have registered to watch streams of more than 1,000 games, which Chushou says means it runs the most active mobile gaming online community in China.