TikTok parent company ByteDance is reportedly valued at US$550 billion (A$775.6 billion) under private equity firm General Atlantic’s plan to sell its stake in the company.
General Atlantic aims to close its sale in March, according to Reuters. ByteDance was reportedly valued at more than $330 billion in an employee share buyback last August, and at $480 billion in a secondary market deal in November.
The sale comes after TikTok’s United States business was reestablished as a joint venture with companies, including Oracle, two months ago. The U.S. passed a law in 2024 that would ban TikTok in the country if China-based ByteDance did not divest from its U.S. operations, citing national security concerns.
“The majority American owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users,” wrote the joint venture TikTok USDS.
General Atlantic first invested in ByteDance in 2017 when the company’s value was around $20 billion, and its CEO, Bill Ford, sits on ByteDance’s board. It has not disclosed the exact size of its stake or the financial terms of a sale.
China-based venture capital firm HSG is also raising a continuation fund to take over some of its ByteDance shares at a valuation of $350-370 billion, Reuters reported last month. HSG’s stake in ByteDance is around 11%.
Apart from TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin, ByteDance’s products include video editing app CapCut, news aggregator Toutiao, and artificial intelligence chatbot Doubao.
Its revenue reportedly surpassed Meta’s for the first time last year. Profits were also on track to reach $50 billion in 2025, per Bloomberg.
