China’s Tencent Is Now Bigger Than Intel

Tencent Holdings isn’t yet a household name in the U.S., but it should be.

With a market cap now slightly above $150 billion, the Chinese social networking and gaming firm is already larger than staid U.S. tech giants like Intel, Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard.

And given Tencent’s shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange are up more than 25% since Jan. 1, if it keeps up the momentum, it could soon eclipse AT&T, which had a market cap at close Monday of $169 billion.

Though few outside of China use Tencent’s services, the company’s increasingly massive value shows it pays to be one of the kings of the Chinese Internet, which now has more Web and smartphone users than any other market in the world. The company’s scale, combined with its increasing ambitions abroad also serve as a reminder that those who ignore the company do so at their own peril.

Tencent’s messaging application WeChat was valued at $64 billion, or about three times the amount Facebook paid for WhatsApp.