The company originally derived income solely from advertising and premium users of QQ, who pay monthly fees to receive extras. Tencent Holding Ltd was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 16 June 2004, and it was added as a Hang Seng Index Constituent Stock in 2008. South African media company Naspers purchased a 46.5% share of Tencent in 2001 As of 2021, it owns 30.86% through Prosus, which also owns a stake in Tencent's sister companies, such as OLX, VK, Group, Delivery Hero, Bykea, Meesho, Stack Overflow, Udemy, Codecademy, Brainly and PayU. The company remained unprofitable for the first three years. Shortly after, Tencent had the client's name changed to QQ this was said to be due to a lawsuit threat from ICQ and its owner AOL. In February 1999, Tencent's messenger product OICQ released. Initial funding was provided to it by venture capitalists. Tencent was founded by Pony Ma, Zhang Zhidong, Xu Chenye, Chen Yidan and Zeng Liqing in November 1998 as Tencent Inc, incorporated in the Cayman Islands. ( February 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) 1998РІР‚вЂњ2010: Founding and growth Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective and add more content related to non-recent events. This article or section appears to be slanted towards recent events. In January 2021, with a valuation approaching US$1 trillion, Tencent's share price plummeted.

TechCrunch characterized Tencent's investment strategy as letting its portfolio startups operate autonomously. Tencent has stakes in over 600 companies, and began focusing on tech start-ups in Asia in 2017.

In 2015, 2018, and 2020, the company was ranked by the Boston Consulting Group and Fast Company among the 50 most innovative companies worldwide. It has since then emerged as the most valuable publicly traded company in China, and among the world's top technology companies by market value. The company surpassed a market value of US$500 billion in 2018, becoming the first Asian technology company to cross this valuation mark. It also owns the majority of China's music services ( Tencent Music), with more than 700 million active users and 120 million paying subscribers. Offerings in China include the instant messengers Tencent QQ and WeChat, and one of the largest web portals, QQ.com. Its services include social network, music, web portals, e-commerce, mobile games, internet services, payment systems, smartphones, and multiplayer online games.

It is among the largest social media, venture capital, and investment corporations. Tencent is the world's largest video game vendor, as well as one of the most financially valuable companies. Its twin-skyscraper headquarters, Tencent Seafront Towers (also known as Tencent Binhai Mansion) are based in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen. Founded in 1998, its subsidiaries globally market various Internet-related services and products, including in entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other technology.

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