Born twelve years ago in Beijing, the Chinese internet giant ByteDance has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, at $225 billion, according to the economic intelligence company CP Insights, ahead of the company space project from Elon Musk SpaceX and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. She is best known for creating the TikTok application, launched in 2017 and which today has more than a billion users. TikTok is the international version of the Douyin application, launched in 2016 and intended only for the Chinese market.
Since its creation, ByteDance has diversified its activity and launched into online commerce and travel booking. The group also created an app for editing videos. Worldwide, it has more than 150,000 employees in more than 120 cities. Its sales will exceed $110 billion in 2023, Bloomberg reported in December. Not being listed on the stock exchange, ByteDance is not required to publish its results, but the media estimate that its turnover is close to that of the largest companies in the world.
TikTok said 60% of ByteDance was owned by institutional investors, including US asset manager BlackRock. The founders of ByteDance own 20% of the shares, the rest being held by the group’s employees, according to TikTok.