Chinese technology company Tencent has purchased a five per cent share in Tesla in a deal worth approximately $1.7 billion.

A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission confirms that the second highest valued tech firm in Asia purchased 8,167,433 shares in the Silicon Valley electric startup. The move sent Tesla's share price up by three per cent in pre-market trading and makes Tencent one of Tesla's largest shareholders, Tech Crunch reports.


This isn't Tencent's first investment in the automotive industry. Most notably, it has a stake in Didi Chuxing, China's largest ride-hailing service that serves almost 400 million users across 400 cities.

What's more, the tech firm is also working on artificial intelligence and recently hired a senior machine learning researcher that previously worked for Baidu.