BEIJING, July 28 (Xinhua) -- The combined revenue of the top-100 Chinese internet companies surged 50.6 percent in 2017, contributing significantly to China's economic growth, a report showed.

Their total revenue stood at 1.72 trillion yuan (about 253 billion U.S. dollars), according to the report jointly unveiled Friday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology information center and the Internet Society of China.

Profits of those companies rose 82.6 percent year on year to 270.71 billion yuan last year, with 83 of them making a profit and 11 seeing profit margins of more than 40 percent, the report said.

Alibaba and Tencent, the two largest internet companies on the list, accounted for more than a quarter of the total revenue and nearly 60 percent of the profits.

Other big names on the list include Baidu, Jingdong, NetEase, Sina, and Sohu.

The top-100 companies invested 106 billion yuan into research and development in 2017, up 41.1 percent year on year, the report said.

The report on China's top-100 internet companies has been released annually since 2013. Revenue from internet businesses of companies on the list rose from less than 400 billion yuan in 2014 to 1.72 trillion yuan last year.