KEY STAT | TikTok owner ByteDance waltzs into USD 100 billion valuation club
ByteDance, the world’s most valuable startup, has grown its valuation in private transactions to more than USD 100 billion, only behind Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and Tencent (HKG: 0700), the top two Chinese internet giants by market cap, according to Bloomberg.
The parent company of hit short-video apps TikTok and Douyin saw its market value rise 33% from the USD 75 billion valuation after a major funding round in 2018, said Bloomberg quoting people familiar with the matter.
The Beijing-based tech company made global headlines earlier this week as it hired former Disney executive Kevin Mayer to become the TikTok’s new CEO. The decision came following ByteDance’s latest round of internal management adjustments, in which CEO and founder Zhang Yiming declared his ambitions for global expansion while handing over the company’s China businesses to the former CEO of Douyin, Kelly Zhang Nan.
SEE ALSO: ByteDance’s founder Zhang Yiming to focus on global expansion after firm’s management restructure
While the company gained global fame because of its short-video duo of TikTok and Douyin, which generated 2 billion global downloads in February and scooped up USD 50.4 million revenue in April. ByteDance is also known as a successful “app factory”, having incubated many popular apps, from news aggregators to mobile games.
The company had 13 games appear in the top 10 free games on iOS in 2019, according to Credit Suisse’s latest research seen by KrASIA.
Recently, the 8-year-old ByteDance has expanded its business into a variety of sectors including online education, online medical services, cloud computing, and in-vehicle infotainment system.
The company’s rapid expansion is posing challenges to incumbent internet giants like Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu, as the firms compete for users’ screen time and digital advertising revenue.
Through an undisclosed investment in late March, Tiger Global Management joined SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital, and others as investors in ByteDance.