Alibaba acquires cloud storage company Kanbox

Alibaba has acquired Kanbox, a Chinese cloud storage service, the company announced on Wednesday.

In an online notice, Alibaba said the company will cooperate with Kanbox to develop "effective and safe personal cloud services". No financial figures were revealed.

Gu Zhicheng, chief executive officer of Kanbox, and other management figures, will join Alibaba, the announcement said.

Alibaba will connect Kanbox user accounts with its own user base and customer information will be shared.

In addition to Alibaba, other Chinese Internet giants, including Baidu and Tencent, have been active in exploring cloud storage.

Baidu disclosed recently that user numbers for its cloud services broke the 100 million mark. Baidu Cloud provides customers with various services, including gaming and healthcare.

Founded in June 2010, Kanbox has about 100 employees and in October 2011 it received $20 million in funding from investment company DCM.

Huang Shengli, general manger of China Renaissance Co, said Alibaba mainly focused on strategic investments in the mobile sector in its previous acquisitions. "The Kanbox deal will strengthen mobile users' loyalty to Alibaba and help lead Alibaba's computing service into an individualized age," Huang said.

Earlier this year, Alibaba invested in Sina's Twitter-like Weibo micro blog business and mobile mapping service provider AutoNavi.