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Who Owns TikTok? Inside The Chinese Tech Giant
TikTok is owed by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company owning several content platforms across the world (Douyin, Toutiao, Xigua Video, Helo, Lark, Babe). Bytedance passed the $100 billion private market valuation by 2020, and making over $17 billion in revenue and over $3 billion in profits.
Bytedance corporate structure
Source: ByteDance
Based on the several products the company has, its holding company is a Cayman corporation, keeping control, of other subsidiaries, from TikTok Ltd., which is the Cayman holding, owning TikTok LLC (in US), TikTok KK, in Japan, TikTok Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, and TikTok Information Technologies UK Ltd. in the UK.
Source: ByteDance
The leadership team is comprised of Yiming Zhang, founder and CEO, followed by the other board of directors.
Source: ByteDance
ByteDance started its international growth, in the western world, when in August 2018, it merged Music.ly with TikTok, and from there the International expansions accelerated.
Source: ByteDance
Within ByteDance there are other investors, comprising private equity and venture capital firms like Sequoia, KKR, and SoftBank.
TikTok business model is quite interesting as it goes beyond the traditional social media format.
TikTok is the Chinese creative social media platform primarily driven by short-form video content. It launches challenges of various types to tap into the creativity of its users and generate engaging (if not addicting content) accessible via an infinite feed. TikTok primarily makes money through advertising, thus making it an attention-based business model.
Other products part of ByteDance
Douyin China’s leading destination for short-form mobile videos. (TikTok in China).
Toutiao one of the most popular content discovery platforms in China.
TikTok leading destination for short-form mobile video.
Xigua Video one of China’s most popular video applications that enable users to discover, enjoy and share a wide range of video stories, both short-form and long-form.
Helo India’s leading social media platforms.
Lark collaboration tools in a single interconnected platform, including chat, calendar, content creation, cloud storage, and app management.
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