Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba has picked up an eight per cent stake in popular youth online video platform Bilibili, which focuses on anime, comic, and game-based content, as well as producing mobile games.

According to a filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), around 24m shares have been bought through Alibaba’s wholly-owned online shopping arm, Taobao.

The deal comes just a few months after Bilibili and Taobao agreed to enter into a ‘business collaboration’ that saw the pair work together to connect content creators and users across both its platform, as well as collaborating to monetise Bilibili’s content assets.

“I believe our cooperation can further unleash Bilibilis commercial potential. I hope our collaboration will bring the creativity of the young Chinese to the world,” Jiang Fan, vice president of Alibaba Group and President of Taobao, told the Xinhua news agency.

Bilibili, founded in 2009, listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in March last year. In October 2018, Tencent paid almost $320m for around 12.3 per cent of the company.