China’s tech titans are losing their global backers.

China’s big tech companies, which have generated rich profits for international investors over the years, are losing popularity with many of their early supporters. The outlook for the country’s tech sector is dimming, prompting investors to lock in their profits.

Hong Kong-listed gaming and social media giant Tencent is a case in point. Naspers, the South African Internet group that first invested in the company 20 years ago, has announced the sale of 1.1 million Tencent shares, reducing its ownership stake to less than 28 percent. The move not only clearly abandons its earlier promise not to lower its stake, but also reveals that more waste is on the way. Naspers’ Dutch global investment arm—called Process—showed its intention by moving an additional 192 million shares worth about $7.6 billion to the Hong Kong Central Clearing and Settlement System.

Although the South African group said it was selling Tencent’s shares to fund the company’s share buyback program, analysts pointed to another consideration that led SoftBank to recently reduce its ownership of e-commerce giant Alibaba and Berkshire Hathaway. Electric vehicle maker BYD.

Brook Silvers, chief investment officer of Hong Kong-based Kaiyuan Capital, said: “The decline in technology by global investment giants signals a major shift in China’s economy.” The rate of growth that has created vast technological possibilities is unlikely to reverse.

In August, Tencent reported the company’s first revenue decline since 2014. Whether the Shenzhen-based giant can return to its growth trajectory seems highly uncertain at the moment. Its core gaming business continues to face regulatory pressure at home, and its once-fast-growing advertising division is struggling with repeated lockouts and an economy weakened by the property sector.

It will join e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, whose Southeast Asian arm Lazada is now preparing to enter Europe as it looks for opportunities overseas. On Thursday, the company raised its patent. assassin’s creed In a deal that gives producer Ubisoft about 11% of the latter at a value of $10 billion. That investment comes a week after he bought a 16.25% stake. Elden ring Developer FromSoftware for an undisclosed amount.

But Tencent and Alibaba have yet to convince investors that they can return, and each company’s shares have lost more than a third of their value in the past 12 months. And as the negative sentiment continues, the BID is also facing questions about whether its growth momentum can be sustained.

The Shenzhen-based company, led by billionaire Wang Chuanfu, reported first-half results at the top of its own guidance, but that didn’t stop legendary investor Warren Buffett from further cutting his Berkshire Hathaway stake in the company.

Kenny Ng, a strategist at Everbright Securities in Hong Kong, said part of the reason may be that the company’s valuation seems high at more than 100 times its current price-to-earnings ratio.

Additionally, preferential government policies, such as tax exemptions for EV purchases, may have little impact in the future as consumer demand gradually fades.

“The industry may not grow as it did in the first half,” says Ng. “There will be continued government support, but it will be difficult to maintain the momentum we have seen in the first six months, at least in the short term.”

Against such a backdrop, big-name investors aim to realize their gains, say analysts.

“In the face of relatively large uncertainties, institutional investors, especially early-stage investors, move to take profits,” says Naspers, SoftBank and Berkshire Hathaway, which have all made handsome returns from China’s tech scene.