Cheetah Mobile acquires News Republic for $57 million

Image Credits:

Chinese tech company Cheetah Mobile has acquired French startup News Republic for $57 million. News Republic is a news aggregator — think about it as a sort of Flipboard, Apple News or RSS reader on steroids. Cheetah Mobile is the company behind optimization tools for computers and phones, such as Battery Doctor and Clean Master.

News Republic has worked with around 1,650 news organizations to access full-text feeds of articles and photos so that you don’t have to leave the app.

You can pick your favorite categories and find articles, but News Republic also recommend articles based on other things. For instance, you can follow your friends and read what they recommend — this feature is reminiscent of Nuzzel. You can also follow curators. And finally, News Republic automatically builds news digests based on your interests.

The startup was created in Bordeaux, France. The team later opened an office in San Francisco, as well. According to CrunchBase, News Republic had raised $10.3 million in total from XAnge, Creathor Venture, Intel Capital and business angels.

Cheetah Mobile is one of the big security and optimization software providers in China that uses advertising for its business model. All the “CM something” Android apps that you may have seen on some devices have been developed by Cheetah Mobile.

For instance, many Samsung Galaxy phones come with pre-installed Cheetah Mobile apps. With this kind of OEM deals, the company has been able to reach a large user base — and collect a lot of data about these users as the company remains an advertising company.

With today’s acquisition, Cheetah Mobile has a good content app, letting the company target a different set of users. The Chinese company plans to keep News Republic running.

Latest Stories