ByteDance has become the world's most valuable startup

Wednesday, 27 May 2020 at 18:38

Chinese manufacturer, TikTok has been doing pretty well in the market. Despite the controversies surrounding the company, its financial report is looking great. TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin generated nearly 315 million downloads worldwide in the first quarter of this year. It also got the highest in-app revenue for April 2020. Well, this amazing performance is not limited to TikTok. Its parent company, ByteDance is also doing pretty well.

According to reports, ByteDance had revenues of more than $17 billion last year and a net profit of more than $3 billion. The data shows that ByteDance has become the world's most valuable startup and is growing at a rapid rate. ByteDance's revenue of $17 billion last year is more than double its total revenue in 2018.

At present, a series of ByteDance apps attract about 1.5 billion active users every month. TikTok, Douyin and Toutiao attract massive downloads. This month, ByteDance also brought in Kevin Mayer, a streaming media tycoon from Walt Disney, as the CEO of TikTok.

ByteDance is a strong competition for other internet companies

ByteDance led by Zhang Yiming is becoming a strong competitor for American internet giants like Facebook and Alphabet. Facebook's Instagram brought about $20 billion in advertising revenue in 2019. Google’s video department claimed YouTube’s advertising sales last year were $ 15.1 billion.

ByteDance is strengthening its business in emerging areas such as e-commerce and gaming. This year, the company has set off a wave of recruitment and is expected to add 40,000 jobs by 2020. ByteDance hopes to be equal to e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding in terms of the number of employees. The current background is that major technology companies around the world are laying off employees.

ByteDance had a very preliminary discussion on the initial public offering (IPO) last year. But given its financial performance, this company is not in a hurry to go public. According to reports, the company currently has more than $6 billion in cash on hand.

CB Insights, a research institute, said that ByteDance, held by SoftBank Group, General Atlantic and Sequoia, has become the world's most valuable startup. According to a previous report by Bloomberg News, some private equity transactions recently valued the Chinese company in the secondary market at between $105 billion and $110 billion.