Kingsoft and other Chinese tech giants will invest a total of $296 million in data center services provider 21Vianet, in the process guaranteeing 5000 racks of data center space for Kingsoft.

Chinese software firm Kingsoft will pay $172 million for shares of 21Vianet, which will take its stake in the company to 12.68 percent. At the same time mobile phone vendor Xiaomi is putting $50 million into 21Vianet, and investment company Temasek is putting in $74 million. As Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun is also a majuor shareholder in Kingsoft, the investments are presumably no coincidence.

Kingsoft said Century will provide customized services to support its cloud software business which is helping companies reduce capital expenditure by moving resources out of the private data centers onto Kingsoft's cloud. It has been reported that 21Vianet will build 5000 racks of data center space for Kingsoft over the next three years.

Everyone on our cloud
21Vianet has already signed similar cloud deals to provide the data centers for US cloud businesses expanding into China, notably a deal with  Microsoft to offer its Office365 and Azure services in China, and one with IBM to provide cloud services.

21Vianet has had a busy time lately in other ways, bouncing back from accusations of fraud, and buying up a range of smaller firms. In June, the company bought stock in Internet service provider AMP Group, so it now owns half of that firm, in a deal which will help 21Vianet expand "last mile" access to its network.

In October, 21Vianet set up a joint venture with manufacturing giant Foxconn to create mass-produced modular data centers and cloud infrastructure. In May, 21Vianet engaged US WAN optimization firm Aryaka to improve network connectivity and application performance.

In November, 21Vianet signed an agreement with the Telecommunications Research Institute, for big data and broadband network research and development.

Recently, Century Internet and Guiyang municipal government, along with Foxconn, Ali Baba and Guiyang Radio agreed to set up a joint venture company, to build a large data network infrastructure and data centers, to create "smart Guiyang."

Laura Luo contributed to this article.