The European search engine Qwant is looking for new financing. The company has approached Hubble, the investment company of Huawei, for this. It would like to receive eight million euros in investment money.
Qwant approached Hubble earlier this year for the amount, Politico writes on the basis of documents surrounding the financing. The CEO of the search engine is said to have asked shareholders to agree to a plan to receive eight million euros from Hubble. That is an investment company that is wholly owned by the Chinese Huawei. The French state bank Caisse des Dépôts is said to have agreed to the plans.
It is not known what conditions would be attached to the financing of Qwant. The financing would not be exchanged directly for shares, but in bonds that can be exchanged for shares later. That would only be possible after two years, for a share of ‘up to 5 to 7.5 percent in ownership of Qwant’, and only with permission from ‘authorities’.
A Qwant spokesperson emphasizes to Politico that the investment does not mean that Huawei will partly own the search engine. “With the bond investment, Huawei is helping Qwant to further develop and build a larger scale at the European level for all Huawei smartphones marketed in France, Germany and Italy.”
Qwant is a French company that wants to create its own all-European search engine to compete with Google and Bing. The search engine mainly focuses on privacy-friendliness. That is not yet very successful in the business field; the company has lost millions of euros in recent years and is still almost entirely financed by the French government.
