Kim Kardashian's game for smartphones and tablets.
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The Kardashian effect: Tencent pays $126M for 15% of Glu Mobile

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

China’s Tencent has bought a 14.6 percent stake in Glu Mobile for $126 million. Call it the Kardashian effect, as the mobile game publisher struck gold last year with Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, a game that has the endorsement of reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian.

The price is about $6 a share for 21 million shares, and it is a higher price than where Glu has traded for the past year. The deal places Glu Mobile’s value at about $863 million, reinforcing it as a major player in a mobile game market that could hit $30 billion this year. Tencent’s games division senior vice president, Steven Ma, is joining Glu’s board.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.