Social network Snowball Finance raises $40M from Renren and others

Snowball Finance (Xueqiu in Chinese), the Chinese finance-focused social media site, announced that the company has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Renren Inc. and joined by existing investor MorningSide Ventures. The company raised a Series A funding of US$10 million last year, and $3.2 million in 2011.

Xueqiu.com is one of the most popular financial social networks among investors in China.

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Renren, the notorious Facebook copy, hasn’tt turned out to be successful in China even though Facebook hasn’t been accessible in China in the past years. The company reported 42 percent year-over-year decrease in total revenue in Q2 2014. Gaming, which used to be the only profitable business of the company, began declining from the second quarter of last year and decreased 57 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of this year.

But Joseph Chen, CEO of Renren Inc., has become a well-known investor as Renren has recorded large gains from investments in Chinese tech companies such as eLong and VIPShop. The company recorded a one-time gain of $50.9 million from the sale of its stake in eLong in the first quarter of 2013.

This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2014