The Chinese start-up is leaving the SoftBank with a valuation of $ 75 billion
Global investors, including the SoftBank Group Corp. The private equity firm KKR & Co. is considering investing in the recent fundraising event of Bytedance Ltd., the owner of China’s most popular information aggregation application.
Bytedance uses Jinri Toutiao, a mobile application that publishes third-party titles and content based on user interests and search history. It is in talks to raise about $ 3 billion and about $ 75 billion (US), the Wall Street Journal reported last month. An amount of $ 1.5 billion would go to convertibles, said one respondent. The total loss would be $ 75 billion, one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.
The information previously provided showed that SoftBank, KKR and the Beijing-based private equity firm Primavera Capital Group were in negotiations, as well as the potential transaction structure. KKR is already a supporter of the company.
The private equity firm General Atlantic, also an investor, also plans to reinvest in this cycle, some people said, and the investment company Tiger Global Management LLC plans to get involved, another person said. Plans could change if the negotiations continue.
Bytedance also operates TikTok, a short video application that has 500 million active users worldwide. It has been merging with the American social media application Musical.ly since last month. With the new funds, the company intends to invest in its international activities that are familiar with this topic.
The referral was last evaluated at the end of last year on a $ 30 billion fundraiser, the Journal reported. A $ 1 billion IPO could take place next year, explain to people who are familiar with the topic.
The fast-growing company faces national regulatory risks. In April, Beijing released one of its popular apps for humorous videos and jokes about “vulgar” content. This prompted founder Zhang Yiming to publicly apologize. A few weeks later, the government newspaper People’s Daily suggested that the company needed algorithms to grab attention and grab users’ attention without adopting “healthy corporate values.” Mayumi Negishi contributed to this article.