On 25 February, Chinese tech giant Baidu announced that it had acquired Joyy Inc.’s video entertainment livestream business in China, mostly the livestream platform YY Live, for 2.1 billion USD, roughly 15.2 billion RMB.
The acquisition was first reported in 2020. However, the current deal is at a much-discounted price compared to the original deal of 36 billion USD, which lapsed in 2023.
- #百度21亿美元收购YY直播 Baidu acquires YY Live for 2.1 billion USD: 16.30 million views on Weibo, no. 37 on Hot Search list.
Comments under the posts using the hashtag are mostly reminiscent of how big YY Live was in 2014 and Baidu has now acquired a complete platform on the cheap. Others think with all the big streamers gone; Baidu has bought an antique.
On the same day, YY Live announced that it had deployed the full version of the DeepSeek R1 AI model on the platform, playfully called YYDS (YY-DeepSeek, also internet lingo meaning “永远的神” YongYuanDeShen, Chinese equivalent to GOAT).
Pundits believe Baidu’s move is to complete its content wing, especially as AI competition is heating up. For marketers and content creators, what Baidu has planned for the platform is definitely worth watching.
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