China’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, is close to sealing an investment in China’s most popular micro-blogging service, Sina Weibo.

Sources cited in a Tencent Tech report say the deal, which is in its final stage, will value Weibo at $2-3 billion and Alibaba will have a 15-20 percent stake in the Twitter-like service after injecting $4-6 billion.

Both companies declined to comment on the report.

Alibaba’s investment will be the key to its future development after its own unsuccessfulsocial network attempts, according to China Business News, an official newspaper in Shanghai.

The investment is also a relief for Sina Weibo, which is still struggling to find a way to monetize its over 400 million users.

In addition, the micro-blogging service is facing increasingly stiffer competition from Tencent’s WeChat, a Whatsapp-like app, which has attracted over 200 million users in less than two years.

Sina, Weibo’s parent company, grossed $9.9 million net profit in the third quarter of this year, a slump of 70 percent over the same period a year earlier.Thecompany is expected to invest over $160 million in its Weibo service, but in the first nine months Sina Weibo generated only $20 million in advertising revenue.

Sina Weibo has made many efforts to improve profitability, yet its hasty moves have also aroused resentment among users. Alibaba’s investment will give Weibo enough time to figure out a mature way of monetization, the Tencent report said.

Analysts said the deal is synergetic to both parties as Weibo will help lead huge web traffic to Alibaba’s shopping site Taobao and will benefit from advertising for enterprises on the Alibaba platform.