Tango, a messaging app that hit 150 million users in September, has announced a new $280 million round of funding with much of it coming from Alibaba.
Alibaba accounted for $215 million, and the remaining $65 million came from past investors such as Qualcomm Ventures and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.
From co-founder and CTO Eric Setton:
“This round really validates our vision of going beyond simple messaging. People are starting to see what is the role of these mobile messaging services, not only connecting people but helping them discover media and services. That is a massive opportunity.”
Companies definitely are, and Facebook’s recent $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp has put significantly more attention on messaging apps.
Tango says it will use the new funds to hire more people, particularly engineers, create more exclusive content/partnerships and increase growth worldwide.
Currently, 25 percent of Tango users are in the U.S., and the majority reside in Asia.
Yesterday, messaging app WeChat announced it surpassed 355 million monthly active users.
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