INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Fast-growing Chinese media startup ByteDance is looking to raise as much as $3 billion to continue growth for its empire of mobile-based
entertainment apps, which include news aggregator Toutiao and video platform Tiktok.
The Beijing-based startup is in early-stage talks with
investors to raise $2.5 billion to $3 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the plans
That investment round could value ByteDance as high as $75 billion, although the source stressed that the valuation is a target and it might
not be reached.
ByteDance declined to comment.
It audacious, but if that lofty goal is reached then ByteDance would become the world
highest-valued startup ahead of the likes of Didi Chuxing ($56 billion) and Uber ($62 billion)
Only Ant Financial has raised at a higher valuation, but the company is an affiliate of Alibaba and therefore not your average
‘startup.
The Wall Street Journal first broke news of the ByteDance investment plan.
But there more:Earlier this week, the Financial Times
cited sources who indicate that ByteDance is keen to go public in Hong Kong with an IPO slated to happen next year.
ByteDance is best-known
for Toutiao, its news aggregator app that claims 120 million daily users, while it also operates a short-video platform called Douyin
The latter is known as TikTok overseas and it counts 500 million active users
TikTok recently merged with Musical.ly, the app that popular in the United States and was acquired by ByteDance for $1 billion, in an
effort aimedat combining both userbases to createan app with global popularity.
The firm also operates international versions of Toutiao,
including TopBuzz and NewsRepublic while it is an investor in streaming app Live.me.
The company growth has been mercurial but it has also
come with problems as the company entered China tech spotlight and became a trulymainstream service in China.
ByteDance had its knuckles
wrapped by authorities at the beginning of the year after it was deemed to have inadequately policed content on its platform
Then in April, its ‘Neihan Duanzi& joke app was shuttered following a government order while Toutiao was temporarily removed from app
It returns days later after the company had grown its content team to 10,000 staff and admitted that some content it had hosted &did not
accord with core socialist values and was not a good guide for public opinion.
Ambitious new media firm ByteDance is no longer a secret
