I have came up a list which showed the vibrant venture capital (VC) market in China, especially the funds that these video sites received. In matter of fact, a number of prominent American VCs that raised funds and investing in China sites have thus helped the growth of this market.

Youku.com: They have completed $25 million in a round C financing on November 21 from Brookside Capital Partners, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, alongside with existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures, as reported in their press release (Mandarin). Youku has previously raised $3 million and $12 million in Series A and B financing.

56.com: 56.com raised a $20 million in a Series B financing from Sequoia Capital China recently, however no official announcement has been made on their home page. In June this year, 56.com has also raised $10 million in a round A financing.

UUSee: UUSee has raised $23.5 million in a round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund and Highland Capital Partners, with Steamboat Ventures joining as a new investor and additional participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital China and Susquehanna International Group, as reported in my March 2007 post.

Pomoho: Stands for “pop, movie & hot.” From a recent buzz in China, Pomoho has raised $10 million in seed funding, however there is no official announcement of this.

PPStream: PPStream has also raised $10 million in a round B financing, venture capitalists include Ceyuan Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners. I did covered this news in my March 2007 post.

Tudou.com: Tudou has recently completed $19 million of its round C financing from Capital Today and General Catalyst Partners. This is on top of $18 million, the company has already raised in round B from JAFCO. Previously, TuDou has raised $800K from IDG Technology Venture Investment in seed funding and $8.5M in a Series A financing.

Although the rapid growth of this VC market and high profile investments from the US venture capitalists, this did not lead to the IPO of these video startups as well as generate huge returns to the investors.

PPStream is making headlines around the China’s Internet industry again by raising $10 million in a round B financing, venture capitalists included Ceyuan Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners, according to an economics newspaper in China. PPStream founded in 2005 (brief overview was covered in my another post) secured few million in round A from Ceyuan Ventures when it officially launched in the market. This round B of financing will thus rapidly visualize their product ideas and dreams in China. Industry pundits had questioned whether the funding on this type of P2P companies such as Xunlei and PPStream is the risky investments by Ceyuan Ventures (Note: Ceyuan Ventures and Google jointly invested $20 million on Xunlei; Read my another post: “Google China Invested in Xunlei“) as the return of Investment (ROI) may deter to a few more years. However, few people can doubt the rising popularity of PPStream and Xunlei in becoming the Internet’s “killer applications.” Until now, PPStream had secured the partnerships with SMG, Phoenix TV, Sina TV, Yahoo! China, ESPN China, and etc.

There are few implications of this financing: it mean that China is not an Internet auxiliary market anymore, and it is a testament for PPStream’s success in China as well. On the other hand, local venture capitalists that set up their offices in China have always gain competitive advantage in spotting good ventures. Also, despite the China’s Internet market is fragmented, the offering of P2P services in China is hot; most of the players selling their services like hot cakes. But I wonder with this round of financing, is PPStream preparing itself to go public in the near future?

I’ve been blogging on P2P online-video last month in a post that entitled, “Skype Founders Name Their New Startup Joost“, that post provides the background for a discussion of Joost’s name chosen strategy. You may wonder, Joost was not a popular topic when an Asian, especially the Chinese educated people when they talk about the online-TV, or videos. The main reason is in China, most people watch TV or videos through Xunlei (my another post) or PPStream, that I going to mention in this post.

PPStream is a widely popular peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet TV application in China and it employed a P2P-streaming technology that similarly to BitTorrent. As stated on its home page, when there are thousand of users in using the technology at one time, more stable the technology it is and the high-speed transfer of large data files over the PPStream would be allowed at that time. In addition, this application allowed anyone with a broadband connection to harness the concept of P2P and thereby accelerate the transfer speeds of TV broadcasts. As you can see on its web page, the TV channels are Chinese TV channels and mostly from China and Hong Kong.

PPStream has just release the latest stable version, i.e. 1.0.4.643, few features have been added to this version that helped the users in reducing the resources a PC might take when downloading the TV. They have added a mini window in the sidebar for the users when they’re watching two various channels on the PPStream. If you’re interested to use PPStream, you can download it by clicking here.

I observed that there is a growing trend of people in using the P2P technology in downloading data. On the business side, more and more new Internet startups are venture into this P2P things, and I guess they (companies) thought the world is awaiting a better way to distribute content. In fact, I quite worry for the side-effect of this emerging trend, particularly after I finished reading this article from Reuters that entitled, “Google and cable firms warn of risks from Web TV.”