Chinese live-streaming gaming platform “Chushou” gets Google as an investor

Alphabet Inc's Google invested $120 million into Chinese live-streaming mobile game platform, Chushou. The Beijing-based startup announced today Google joined as a new investor, which brings its total funding so far to over $120 million. Chushou’s previous investors include Qiming Venture, Shunwei Capital, and Alpha X Capital.

Live stream gaming platforms are a popular form of e-sports in China, part of a growing industry that involves competitive gameplay viewed by spectators.

Google’s YouTube launched a specialized service for live stream gamers in 2015, capturing a large chunk of the global market. This is Google's second-ever investment in a Chinese startup.

Google's inability to access China's large population of young, tech-savvy internet users poses a challenge for the firm whose search engine has expanded to become the world's largest and most ubiquitous.

Founded in 2015, Chushou is an online e-sports platform where users can live stream their mobile phone games. The service has roughly 8 million streamers and 250,000 live streams a day, said the companies in a statement and Google will help the Chinese firm expand its services to target more overseas viewers, it said.

"Chushou has built an impressive platform, with a dedicated and quickly growing base of content creators and consumers, and smart expansion plans," said Frank Lin, who oversees corporate development for Google in North Asia, in the statement.