DST Global, the top Russian international investor in Internet assets, and Silver Lake, a global leader in private investments in technology, announced last week their commitment to invest in Alibaba Group, a premier Chinese technology company.
This is the second investment from DST this year in Chinese e-commerce. In March, the fund took part in the third round of financing for 360buy.com.
The investment in Alibaba will primarily be used to buy stock from employees, with China based private equity firm Yunfeng Capital taking part in the liquidity program, the Silver Lake press release indicated.
Neither the amount of the deal nor Alibaba’s valuation were disclosed, but Bloomberg revealed on Friday – referring to unnamed sources – that the transaction valued Alibaba at $32 billion and that the liquidity program amounted to as much as $1.6 billion.
The Alibaba Group owns Alibaba.com, the leading Asian B2B market place, Taobao online, a shopping site with more than 370 million users, along with other B2B and B2C web properties.
Over the past two years, DST Global has invested in such leading international Internet companies as Airbnb, Facebook, Groupon, Spotify, and Zynga. Last summer, the Russian fund invested a whopping $800 million in Twitter, then $50 million in ZocDoc, an ambitious US medical appointment startup.
DST Global is also closely connected to Mail.ru Group, the leading Russian Internet group which was listed on the LSE last year.
