Just last year, the world’s most valuable startup, ByteDance Ltd., was being squeezed from all sides.
The Trump administration wanted the Chinese firm, which owns the ubiquitous TikTok video-sharing platform, to get rid of assets. Beijing was cracking down on tech businesses, and India blacklisted some of its social-media apps.
For all the obstacles, ByteDance kept growing. Now its founder, 38-year-old Zhang Yiming, is among the world’s richest people—a distinction that lately has carried increased risks in China.
Shares of the company trade in the private market at a valuation of more than $250 billion, people familiar with the dealings have said. At that level, Zhang, who owns about a quarter of ByteDance, could be worth more than $60 billion, placing him alongside Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Pony Ma, bottled-water king Zhong Shanshan and members of the Walton and Koch families in the U.S., according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
ByteDance, famous for its short-video apps and news aggregator Toutiao, more than doubled revenue last year after expanding beyond its core advertising business into areas such as e-commerce and online gaming. It’s now weighing options for the initial public offering of some businesses.
“Zhang is someone who’s known for thinking long-term and not easily dissuaded by short-term setbacks,” said Ma Rui, partner at venture-capital firm Synaptic Ventures. “He is set on building an enduring, global business.”
Surging Valuation
During its last fundraising round, ByteDance reached a $180 billion valuation, a person with knowledge of the matter said. That’s up from $20 billion about three years ago, according to CB Insights. But in the private market, some investors recently were asking for the equivalent of a $350 billion valuation to part with their shares, people familiar have said. The company’s value for private-equity investors is approaching $400 billion, the South China Morning Post reported. That would mean an even bigger fortune for Zhang.
ByteDance representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.
It’s a tough time to be wealthy in China as the government seeks to rein in the country’s most powerful corporations and their billionaire founders. Just ask Jack Ma: After opening an antitrust probe, regulators fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion and the central bank ordered an overhaul of his Ant Group Co. fintech empire so it’d be supervised more like a bank. On Tuesday, China ordered 34 internet companies to rectify their anti-competitive practices in the coming month.
While ByteDance hasn’t been singled out as a target, its dominance in social media and war chest for deal-making are sensitive areas the government is looking into.