Sina Weibo's users surpassed 140 million by the end of March this year.

China's 'Twitter' turns down US$500 mln investment from DST

新浪微博拒絕俄羅斯DST的5億美元投資

Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblogging service, has turned down a US$500 million investment offer from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Sina Tech reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, DST gave the Chinese Twitter analogue a valuation of US$5 billion.

Sina Weibo used to be a unit under Sina.com but was registered as a separate company, Beijing MicroDream TechnoInnovation IT Technology Co., last October. The company has registered capital of US$20 million and hasn't raised funds so far.

Based on the latest statistics, Sina Weibo's userbase has exceeded 140 million.

It's widely speculated that Sina Weibo is preparing for an IPO. Besides registering as an independent company, the microblogging service also started using the new domain name weibo.com on April 7.

According to the site's Q1 results, Sina Weibo offered options equivalent to 15.9 percent of its ordinary shares to the management team and employees.

But Sina CEO Cao Guowei said his company currently doesn't have plans to spin-off Sina Weibo.

DST has invested in group-buying website Groupon, social game provider Zynga and social networking giant Facebook. The Russian company also took part in a third round of fundraising by Chinese online retailer 360buy.com in April.

據消息人士透露，俄羅斯投資公司Digital Sky Technologies(簡稱DST)出資5億美元欲投資中國最熱門的微博服務提供商新浪微博，遭到新浪微博拒絕。

據稱，DST對新浪微博的估值為50億美元。

新浪微博原為新浪網下屬部門，去年10月份注冊為獨立公司，名為北京微夢創科網絡技術有限公司，注冊資本2000萬美元，截至目前尚未進行過融資。

據最新公布的數據顯示，新浪微博用戶1.4億。

目前，新浪微博分拆上市的足跡日漸清晰。除了注冊成為獨立公司，今年4月7日，新浪微博啟用新域名weibo.com。

新浪一季報披露，新浪微博公司已經向管理層及員工發放了占攤薄后總股本15.9%的期權。

但新浪CEO曹國偉表示，新浪微博暫無分拆計劃。

據悉，DST投資的公司有Groupon、Zynga和Facebook。今年4月份京東商城宣布完成C輪15億美元融資，投資方包括DST。