ByteDance Ltd. is a private technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing, with its holding company incorporated in the Cayman Islands. It owns TikTok, Douyin, CapCut, Toutiao, Lark/Feishu and the Doubao AI assistant. ByteDance does not publish financial statements; The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2026 that 2025 revenue rose 29% to about $200 billion and net profit rose 27% to about $42 billion.
ByteDance key facts
- Founded: March 13, 2012, by Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo
- Headquarters: Haidian, Beijing, China
- Chairman and CEO: Liang Rubo (CEO since November 2021)
- Reported revenue: about $200 billion in 2025 and about $120 billion in the first half of 2026 (unaudited)
- Employees: more than 150,000 in nearly 120 cities (company figure)
- Main products: TikTok, Douyin, TikTok Shop, CapCut, Toutiao, Lark/Feishu, Doubao, Pico
How does ByteDance make money?
Advertising is the largest business. Brands buy in-feed, search and brand ads on TikTok, Douyin and Toutiao through TikTok for Business and, in China, Ocean Engine. Commerce is the second engine: Douyin E-commerce and TikTok Shop earn commissions and merchant ad fees, and 36Kr reported that TikTok Shop's gross merchandise value grew nearly 70% in 2025. Livestream viewers buy virtual gifts that are split with creators, and enterprise products such as Volcano Engine cloud and AI services and Lark/Feishu add subscription and usage revenue.
Who owns ByteDance?
ByteDance is privately held. Global institutional investors, including Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic, KKR and SoftBank, own about 60% of the shares; founders and Chinese investors about 20%; and employees about 20%. Zhang Yiming left the board in 2021 but controls more than half of the votes, according to Reuters. The board is chaired by Liang Rubo and includes Arthur Dantchik, William E. Ford, Neil Shen and Xavier Niel.
What happened to TikTok in the United States?
A 2024 US law required ByteDance to divest TikTok's US business, and the Supreme Court upheld it in January 2025. On January 22, 2026, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was established. Silver Lake, Oracle and MGX hold 15% each, a group including affiliates of existing ByteDance investors holds most of the rest, and ByteDance keeps 19.9%. The joint venture, led by CEO Adam Presser, retrains the US recommendation algorithm on US data inside Oracle's cloud and controls US content moderation, while TikTok global's US entities keep e-commerce, advertising and marketing.
How has ByteDance's revenue grown?
- 2022: about $80 billion (Bloomberg)
- 2023: nearly $120 billion (Bloomberg)
- 2024: $155 billion, with about $33 billion of net profit (Bloomberg)
- 2025: about $200 billion, with about $42 billion of net profit (WSJ)
All figures are unaudited. Some Chinese media reports in April 2026 said 2025 net profit fell more than 70% because of AI spending, which conflicts with the later WSJ figure. Overseas revenue passed 30% of the total in 2025, according to 36Kr.
What is ByteDance's AI strategy?
ByteDance is putting a growing share of its cash into AI. The Seed 2.0 model family launched in February 2026 and powers Doubao, which led Chinese chatbot apps with about 155 million weekly active users at the end of 2025, according to QuestMobile. Bloomberg reported that ByteDance was weighing up to $70 billion of AI infrastructure spending in 2026, and in September 2026 it signed a $29.6 billion three-year loan with nearly 30 banks. It also agreed in March 2026 to sell game studio Moonton for about $6 billion.
What are ByteDance's biggest risks?
Cost and regulation. First-half 2026 net profit reportedly eased to about $20 billion even as revenue grew more than 30%. In Europe, Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined TikTok ~$599 million (€530 million) in May 2025 over data transfers to China, and the European Commission issued preliminary Digital Services Act findings in 2026 on addictive design and minors' settings. Competition is intense from Meta, YouTube, Kuaishou, Alibaba and DeepSeek.
