According to a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the Chinese company The9 Ltd bought 5,297,257 tokens during a Telegram initial token offering in January 2018 for $2 million dollars. The filing also states that The9 has invested in multiple blockchain-based companies as of 2018.
According to a report by Russian business news agency RBC on July 24, this document is evidence of The9 as the first publicly-known foreign investor. Per RBC, Telegram’s initial coin offering (ICO) investors are largely unknown.