Tencent’s 60,000% Runup Leads to One of the Biggest VC Payoffs Ever

South African media company Naspers Ltd. is cashing in a sliver of one of the greatest venture-capital investments ever.

The Cape Town-based company is selling $10.6 billion of shares in Tencent Holdings Ltd., equal to 2 percent of the stock in the Chinese operator of the WeChat messaging service, it said in a statement Thursday. 

The stake Naspers bought for just $32 million in 2001 -- when Tencent was an obscure Web firm in a nation where few people used the Internet -- is now worth $175 billion.

Who would have thought?