Mobile messaging services vendor Tango has closed a $280 million round of funding with the Alibaba Group investing $215 million.
Additional $65 million was invested by some of Tango’s prior investors.
This round of funding will enable Tango to innovate, hire the best talent, expand its content partnerships, and build better platform.
Tango mobile messaging features include free video and voice calling and texting available cross-platform over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi.
Tango CEO and founder Uri Raz said that Alibaba is a renowned disruptive innovator, and their investment in Tango is a testament to itsstrategy and a clear indication of the future potential of how content and services will be delivered to consumers.
Tango said since rolling out social networking features on Tango in July 2013, daily engagement has doubled. Hundreds of millions of songs have been shared between members since Tango introduced music through integration with Spotify in October 2013. The ability to play games online together with friends on Tango has driven an increasing amount of game downloads and activity.
Tango’s evolution toward an all-in-one messaging, social and content platform has helped double registered users to 200 million compared to a year ago, and monthly active users has reached 70 million.
Tango previously raised $87 million from Access Industries, DFJ, Qualcomm Ventures, Toms Capital and Translink Capital, as well as Bill Tai, Shimon Weintraub, Jerry Yang, Alex Zubillaga and others.
Tango has raised $367 million in venture capital financing to date.