Alibaba Group Hol ding's finance affiliate has raised a record $4.5 billion from a consortium of powerful state-backed investors to bankroll its
global expansion
.
The new funding marked the technology industry's single largest round of private financing and surpassed an initial target set by Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co, controlled by billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp and an investment vehicle of China Construction Bank Corp, the country's second largest lender, joined as new inves tors, it said in a statement.
Ant Financial, as the company's known, aimed to raise at least $3.5 billion at a valuation of $60 billion and is considering an initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange as early as this year, people familiar with the matter have said. The company runs China's biggest online payment service, Alipay , and controls the company that manages Yu'E Bao, the nation's largest money-market fund.
In recent years, Ant Financial began venturing beyond its home turf. It's a backer of Paytm, India's largest payments provider with about 122 million users as of January and processing about 52 million transactions per month on average.
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