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Global investors, including
SoftBank Group
Corp.
9984 4.65%
and private equity firm
KKR
& Co. plans to invest in the latest fundraising campaign for Bytedance Ltd., owner of China's most popular news aggregation app, according to people familiar with the subject.
Bytedance exploits Jinri Toutiao, a mobile application that provides news headlines and third-party content based on user interests and search history. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that it was raising about $ 3 billion for a valuation of about $ 75 billion. Of the funds raised, $ 1.5 billion would be in convertible bonds, said one of the people. At $ 75 billion, Bytedance would be one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.
Previously published information indicated that SoftBank, KKR and Beijing-based private equity firm Primavera Capital Group were in talks to invest, as well as the potential transaction structure. KKR is already a funder of the company.
The private equity firm General Atlantic, which is already an investor, also plans to reinvest in this cycle, said some people, and the investment company Tiger Global Management LLC plans to participate, said another person. Plans may change as discussions continue.
Bytedance also operates TikTok, a short video application that has 500 million monthly active users worldwide and which merged last month with the American social media application Musical.ly The company plans to Use the new funds to invest in one's international activities a person familiar with the subject.
More recently, Bytedance was valued at about $ 30 billion during a fundraiser at the end of last year, the newspaper reported earlier. An initial multibillion-dollar public offering could take place as early as next year, familiar people said.
The growing company is facing regulatory risks at home. In April, Beijing closed one of its popular applications, used to share humorous videos and jokes, on "vulgar" content. This led the founder Zhang Yiming to make a public apology. A few weeks later, the newspaper People's Daily criticized the company for relying on algorithms to attract attention and users while not applying "corporate values".
-Mayumi Negishi contributed to this article.
Write to Julie Steinberg at [email protected] and Stella Yifan Xie at [email protected]
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