Xunlei means swift thunder, and for a decade it was how China downloaded things. Its free Xunlei Accelerator had about 142 million monthly users in March 2014 and an 84.1 percent share of its market. The Shenzhen company first filed to go public in the United States in 2011, then waited. When it finally listed in June 2014, it was selling paid speed to a country hungry for video.

Shenzhen, January 2003

Sean Shenglong Zou and Hao Cheng started Xunlei in Shenzhen in January 2003. Its software split big downloads into pieces and pulled them from many sources at once. The core product was free. Xunlei made money from subscribers who paid for faster cloud downloads, and from ads. It struck deals to preinstall its mobile apps on phones, including those from Xiaomi. The bet was that Chinese users would pay to skip the wait.

Three Years Late, Twelve Dollars

Xunlei priced its American depositary shares at $12 each in June 2014 and listed on Nasdaq as XNET, raising about $88 million. Faster home connections and streaming apps slowly made download tools less vital. Xunlei shifted toward cloud computing and other services, and its shares traded far below the IPO price for most of the years that followed. It is still public on Nasdaq.

Cover: The Actor Nakamura Nakazo I as the Thunder God, an Incarnation of Kan Shojo, in the Play Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami, Performed at the Morita Theater in the Third Month, 1780, Katsukawa Shunsho. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the thunder god (Xunlei, 'swift thunder').