(Yicai Global) July 4 -- Ant Financial Services Group, the world's largest fintech company, has injected close to USD100 million in China's Snowball Finance, a social network for investors tracking the country's financial markets.

Snowball's latest round of funding values the company at USD400 million to USD500 million, WeChat-based news outlet Touchweb reported, adding that previous investor Renren has reduced its holding significantly.

Ant Financial and Snowball are yet to comment on the report.

Snowball's last financing round came in 2014, raising USD40 million with Renren leading the funding.

Since its debut in late 2011, Snowball has been providing cross-market and cross-variety data query, information acquisition and interactive exchange services for Chinese investors.

Despite Xueqiu's relatively long-established presence, its user base of tens of million is small compared with China's consumer fintech firms.

If duplicate investors in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets are excluded, Snowball's actual number of investors is only 50 million, with only about 40 million having money in their accounts, said Founder Fang Sanwen.

Editor: William Clegg