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60k+
Number of
employees
2012
Founded.
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500M+
App users
world-wide
250B+
Increasing
valuation
TikTok owner ByteDance may be worth more than Twitter and Coca-Cola as a public company.
The Beijing-based start-up is currently the world’s highest-valued unicorn.
ByteDance has more than doubled its internal valuation in a new stock option plan for employees, as strong performance by its short video-sharing platform TikTok raised optimism about its business outlook, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
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The company has offered employees the option of exchanging their bonuses for ByteDance’s untraded stocks at US$126 per share, compared with last year’s offer of under US$50, according to the people. In 2019, the price was US$44.
The valuation of the Beijing-based online entertainment start-up has drawn increasing interest amid reports that it is planning an initial public offering. In February, it was reported that ByteDance was mulling a US listing for Douyin, the Chinese sibling app of TikTok, and last month, Reuters reported that the company was in talks over a possible debut for Douyin in New York or Hong Kong.
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The latest stock-option price for employees represents a discount of roughly 30 per cent from the offer of US$180 under a share-buy-back plan offered to resigning employees last month, which put the valuation of ByteDance at US$270 billion.
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The hefty rise in internal stock-option price in the past 12 months mirrors the private equity market’s assessment of the firm, now the world’s highest-valued unicorn.
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ByteDance’s valuation was approaching US$400 billion for new external investors – almost tripling its US$140 billion valuation after its series C fundraising in March 2020, according to data from analytics firm CB Insights.
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Bytedance believes that its algorithmic approach to content could work around the world, and it has developed Toutiao-like apps for other markets. Helo, for example, is a similar product aimed at India with support for 14 local vernaculars, and TopBuzz does a similar thing in English. But so far, its highest-profile efforts in Western markets have focused on creative communities. The company bought short movie-making app Flipagram last year and rebranded it as Vigo Video, then followed up by acquiring Musical.ly to merge with its similar service Douyin. Bytedance reportedly even tried to buy Reddit in 2016, but it was rebuffed.
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With TikTok, rebranded from the joining of Musical.ly and Douyin, Bytedance has a global hit. The company says it racked up more downloads in the US than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube in both September and October, and TikTok now has over half a billion people worldwide using it monthly. The app has been downloaded nearly 80 million times in the US, with even the likes of Jimmy Fallon giving it high-profile endorsements.
How China’s Bytedance became the world’s most valuable startup
TikTok is inescapable right now, and it’s not just teens paying attention — it’s rocked the business world as well. Bytedance, the owner of the wildly popular short-form video app, is now valued at more than $75 billion following a new round of investment. This means Uber has unexpectedly lost its long-held title of the world’s most valuable tech startup to a low-profile challenger from China.
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You could be forgiven for not having heard the name Bytedance before the recent news. The founder, 35-year-old Zhang Yiming, rarely gives interviews, and the company’s Western-facing media presence is close to nonexistent. But the company’s global ambitions are real and so are its chances. Bytedance is the first Chinese internet company with a significant, genuinely engaged following around the world, which means it’s worthy of serious attention.
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On its website, Bytedance claims to be “one of the first companies to launch mobile-first products powered by machine learning technology,” with Zhang having seen an opportunity “to combine the power of artificial intelligence with the growth of mobile internet to revolutionize the way people consume and receive information.” But what does any of that have to do with teens singing karaoke into their selfie cameras through TikTok?
Bytedance’s flagship product in China is actually Jinri Toutiao (“Today’s Headlines”), a massively popular news aggregation service that uses AI to track reader habits and push them stories from various sources. Most of the content is decidedly low-brow and could be called “clickbait” if not for the fact that it keeps people coming back. Since it launched in 2012, Toutiao has accumulated hundreds of millions of daily active users who are hooked on its personalized blend of articles.
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Should BYTEDANCE be considered the most valuable startup in the world?
With funding from the likes of SoftBank and Sequoia Capital driving the valuation so high, Bytedance won’t have many options other than to eventually file an IPO if it ever wants to raise more cash and return money to investors. But with such a large number of engaged users and a steep upward trajectory, it also shouldn’t have too much trouble finding ways to turn a profit.
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It’s the first Chinese company to tap into the lucrative social media appetite of Westerners, and that could prove to be very valuable indeed.
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TikTok owner ByteDance more than doubled it's sales to $35 billion despite US ban, defying heightened global competition and Trump's attempt to ban its signature video service TikTok in the U.S.
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ByteDance Ltd. is a multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and legally domiciled in the Cayman Islands. It was founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. ByteDance is the developer of the video-sharing social networking services and apps TikTok and Douyin, the Chinese-specific counterpart to TikTok.
ByteDance is currently considered the most explosive and valuable IPO recorded.