Chen Rui (
陈睿 current CEO of
Bilibili) founded Cheetah Mobile. The company was established in 2010 as a merger of
Kingsoft Security (where Chen served as General Manager) and
Conew Image (which was founded by Sheng Fu). In 2014, Cheetah Mobile launched an
IPO selling 13 million
American depositary shares at US$14 per share, and thereby raised US$168 million. The IPO was managed by
Morgan Stanley,
JP Morgan Chase & Co., and
Credit Suisse Group.
Kingsoft and
Tencent are major investors in Cheetah Mobile, holding 54% and 18% respectively. In late 2015, Cheetah Mobile announced that it had entered into a global strategic partnership with Yahoo. The company incorporated Yahoo's search and native advertising platforms within its own apps. In February 2016, Cheetah Mobile and
Cubot launched the CheetahPhone, an
Android 6.0 Marshmallow based smartphone, at MWC in
Barcelona,
Spain. On April 1, 2015 Cheetah Mobile acquired French mobile advertising firm MobPartner, valued at $58 million. On August 2, 2016, Cheetah Mobile announced its acquisition of a French startup
News Republic for $57 million. News Republic is a news aggregator. On February 20, 2020, Cheetah Mobile was banned from Google Play due to their scheme of
ad fraud, resulting in all of their apps being removed as part of a 600 app deletion. In September 2022, the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company's CEO and former President with
insider trading. The SEC found that Sheng Fu, CEO, and Ming Xu, then-President and CTO of Cheetah Mobile, established a trading plan after learning of a significant drop in advertising revenues from their largest partner. In 2016, they sold 96,000 Cheetah Mobile shares under this plan, avoiding losses of approximately $203,290 and $100,127, respectively. Sheng Fu also made misleading public statements about the company's revenue trends and failed to disclose negative revenue trends in its 2016 reports. Both Fu and Xu violated antifraud provisions of the
Securities Exchange Act, with Fu also violating provisions of the
Securities Act, leading to cease-and-desist orders and civil penalties of $556,580 for Fu and $200,254 for Xu. ==Controversies==