The Baidu-owned video service iQiyi has raised over 1.5 billion US dollars from the sale of convertible bonds to its investors. The investors included Baidu which itself invested 300 million US dollars, with companies including Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital responsible for the rest. Baidu's CEO Robin Li said that the video platform was “a great asset and an important part of the Baidu ecosystem”. It was confirmed by the company that the investment was likely to be spent on acquiring new content for iQiyi, as well as improving its own technology for finding illegal content online. Currently, the service has nearly 500 million users, and claims that 5.5 billion hours of video are streamed each month.Â
