Chinese tech giant Tencent, the company behind popular messaging app WeChat, has bought a five per cent stake in US automaker Tesla. The Chinese company will not have any say in the running of the California-based car manufacturer.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, Tencent paid around $1.8bn (£1.4bn) for 8,167,544 shares through a common stock offering and open market purchases. The move by Tencent makes it Tesla’s fifth-largest shareholder and adds to the shares it has acquired in other electric vehicle company NIO and multinational tech company Snap as an early investor.

Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk remains the largest shareholder in the company, with a stake of around 21 per cent as of 2016’s close.

Tesla has been seeking capital, as a result of high spending in the lead up to the launch of its Model 3 sedan, and raised as much as 1.4bn in a stock and debt offering earlier this month.

According to Bloomberg, Tesla’s revenues in China tripled to more than $1bn – accounting for more than 15 per cent of Tesla’s $7bn revenue.