Providence Equity Partners is selling its stake in online video hub iQiyi.com to Chinese internet search giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU). Providence and Baidu co-founded the iQiyi video platform with a $50 million investment in early 2010. The website itself was launched just months later in April 2010. Baidu provided another $23 million in growth equity in October 2011. iQiyi was recently ranked as the top online video platform in China based on average time spent per user. The deal is expected to close this quarter.
