Tencent has overtaken Facebook to become the first Asian firm to join the group of publicly traded companies worth more than $500bn, according to the World Economic Forum.

Tencent achieved this feat following a recent surge in its share price as online gaming revenues grew 48% to RMB26.8bn largely driven by the continued success of Honour of Kings, as well as new titles such as a Chinese version of Contra Return. Smartphone games continued to dominate, increasing 84% to represent RMB18.2bn in revenue while PC games grew 27% to RMB14.6bn.

Tencent has continued to focus on digital content to drive growth for the company as it moved beyond gaming to focus on monetising its content to grow advertising revenues. It earlier invested around $15bn into eSports.

The 2017 Brandz top 100 valuable brands ranking put Tencent on the eighth spot in June last year. The media company was also ranked 24th on the Forbes list of the world’s 100 most innovative companies.

Earlier, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said: “During the third quarter of 2017, we recorded strong business and revenue growth across multiple business lines including games, digital content, online advertising and payment related services. In particular, our video platform gained audience and revenue market share, we believe it has become China’s top online video platform in terms of mobile daily active users and subscriptions.

“We believe this success reflects our increasing investment in self-commissioned video content, our improved selection of licensed video content, and our scheduling and audience management initiatives. We believe our multi-faceted digital content businesses are synergistic with each other, and allow us to deliver unique content to our users.”