Tencent surpasses Facebook to join world's top five corporations

China's investment holding conglomerate, Tencent has surpassed Facebook to become the first Chinese technology company to join the ranks of the world’s five largest corporations, as per a report by Bloomberg. The owner of WeChat messaging service is now valued at $523 billion, just above Facebook's valuation of $522 billion.

Led by Chinese billionaire Pony Ma, Tencent this month reported a better-than-expected 69 per cent rise in third-quarter net profit. Tencent's stock has more than doubled this year, reaching record $428 Hong Kong dollars per share. And its latest jump has helped it usurp Facebook in the list of global top five companies.

Corporations ahead of Tencent Holdings are- the iPhone maker Apple which has a market capitalization of about $873 billion followed by Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.

Investors at Tencent are betting that the company can lean on its billion plus users and popular games like Honor of Kings to evolve into an advertising and entertainment king along the lines of Google and Facebook.

After Tencent, rival Alibaba Group ranks second among Asian firms with a market value of $481.5 billion, while South Korea's Samsung Electronics is No. 3 at $364 billion.

Recently, Tencent invested close to $400 million in the Indian cab aggregator and Uber's arch-rival, Ola. The company has also invested in online education provider Byju's with the amount reported to be close to $800 million.