On Tuesday, the Chinese Internet Giant Tencent has invested $50 million in a Canadian chat app Kik, which is known as the ‘WeChat of the West.’ This new investment has increased the value of the Canadian startup to more than $1 billion making it join the Unicorn club.

Kik has announced it is to double in size after accepting a $50m investment from Chinese internet services provider Tencent which values the chat network at $1bn.

“We agreed that someone would do in the West what WeChat was doing in China”.

There are no details on what kind of strategic partnership Tencent and Kik will have in the wake of the investment.

“At first, I was hesitant”, said Kik’s CEO Ted Livingston, referring to partnering with a large company such as Tencent. “They had significant success and resources, allowing them to have the patience required for Kik to pursue a long-term vision for a chat-based ecosystem”. “We can’t think of a better group to be building for”. “Consumers and developers alike are suffering from app overload, and we are increasingly seeing the potential for services to be delivered in better, lighter-weight ways through chat, especially with bots”.

They also have offices in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Kik Interactive, which launched by students from the University of Waterloo in 2009, currently has 51 employees.

Ontario-based company Kik competes with other messaging services like Whatsapp, Snapchat or the Facebook Messenger app. Its revival has been built on U.S. youth, 40 percent of which are now active users of Kik. Kik is hoping to draw from Tencent’s experience in turning its messaging app into a platform to also do online shopping, order taxis or play games.