Tencent (HKG: 0700) is a Chinese company that encompasses a swath of services including the social media platform WeChat, video game production, and payment processing. Tencent is not as well-known as Alibaba (BABA  ) and Huawei (SHE: 002502), but it briefly overtook Facebook (FB  ) in market capitalization value in November 2017, partly because of the rising popularity of its fantasy role-playing game, Honor of Kings. Had someone invested $1,000 in Tencent thirteen years ago, that investment would be worth $1 million today.

Tencent is run by the Chinese billionaire Pony Ma. In the past year, Tencent has made a series of investments in Western companies that have piqued commentators' attention, including a 5% stake in Tesla (TSLA  ), a 10% stake in Snap (SNAP  ), a stake in Essential Products, and, most recently, a 10% stock swap with Spotify. With the exception of Snap, none of these businesses have much overlap with Tencent's own business. However, they do all count within the circle of companies regarded as competitors of Facebook, Apple (AAPL  ), Amazon (AMZN  ), and Google (GOOGL  ).

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Tencent itself is the first Asian tech company valued at over $500 billion. Amazon helped back Tencent's investment in Essential's new phone, and Tencent reciprocated by backing League of Legends on Twitch, Amazon's gaming platform. Yet Tencent simultaneously released a rival to Amazon Web Services in America. In contrast to its mild relationship with Amazon, Tencent's relationship with Facebook is far more strained. When Pony Ma was recovering from back surgery, Mark Zuckerberg swooped in on Tencent's talks and acquired WhatsApp while Ma was incapacitated.

Much like Tesla, Tencent is also developing a diverse array of projects, including autonomous car development, a health diagnostics platform, advertising services, and others that also resemble projects undertaken by Alphabet. And Tencent's WeChat platform has staved off competition from Apple, as Chinese smartphone users have their needs met by WeChat and thus do not feel the need to participate in Apple's world of hardware and applications.

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To experts, WeChat's popularity in China presents a major difficulty for Apple. Apple has been struggling to increase the reach of its own messaging platforms, and has offered to cooperate with Chinese lawmakers. But because China restricts access to the internet, many large Western tech companies like Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft (MSFT  ) and Amazon are unable to flourish in China.

The differences between Chinese companies and Western companies extend to how they generate revenues. Whereas Facebook makes money through advertising, and Amazon takes a cut of the price of the merchandise it sells, Chinese companies like Tencent sell emoticons and outfits for game characters.