A new tech giant just landed in Silicon Beach. Video game publisher Tencent America told the Los Angeles Times this week that it will soon open a new, 53,000-square-foot office in Playa Vista to account for its newfound growth. In addition to providing internet services in China the company also offers mobile, telecom and online advertising services.
Tencent plans to double the size of its 150-person LA-based workforce over the next three years, according to the Times. The company will focus on hiring employees who work in video game design and development, programming and data engineering. Dozens of open LA-based roles are already listed on the company’s careers page, and the company also posted footage of the new office to its Twitter account this week.
The Playa Vista facility is located on West Jefferson Boulevard and includes a cafe, fitness center, production facilities and several game rooms, the Times reports. The new workspace, which is consolidating the company’s previous LA-area offices in Santa Monica, Claremont and Century City, will be right down the street from Facebook’s LA-based office.
The company has slowly but surely been increasing its presence in the City of Angels over the past few years. In 2018, Tencent took a sizable stake in Skydance Media, an LA-based production company. Earlier this year, the company increased its ownership of Santa Monica-based company Universal Music Group to 20 percent. It also participated in the $57 million Series B funding round for Pex, an LA-based music licensing startup, in February.
Tencent has 86,000 employees worldwide and has raised $12.6 billion in financing to date, according to Crunchbase. In addition to its LA presence, the company also has U.S. offices in Palo Alto, New York and the Seattle area.
