Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial and Alipay, is an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group. Ant Financial is the world’s highest-valued FinTech company, and most valuable unicorn (start-up) company, with a valuation of US$150 billion.
In March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ant’s flagship Tianhong Yu’e Bao money-market fund was the biggest in the world, with over 588 million users of Ant’s mobile payments network Alipay contributing, more than a third of China’s population.
The establishment of ANEXT is a sign that the firm is still keeping track of its growth push, and should the new firm trail Ant Group’s style of growth, it stands the chance of becoming a mega unicorn in the near future.
The latest round of examination on Ant Group, led by China’s National Audit Office was the most extensive yet even though the reason for the latest round of inspection, was unclear.
