TikTok owner ByteDance plans US$6 billion buyback at US$400 billion valuation

BYTEDANCE plans to buy back up to US$6 billion of shares from investors at a valuation of about US$400 billion, marking a 20 per cent uptick from a similar programme a year ago, according to people who have reviewed the proposal.

TikTok’s Chinese owner informed investors of the offer in a recent letter, setting the price at US$241.35 per share, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.

ByteDance is also proposing to push out by four years its deadline to either go public or grant external shareholders the right to sell back their entire stakes, to Dec 11, 2030, one of the people said.

A ByteDance spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the initiatives, which were first reported by The Information.

In its letter to shareholders, ByteDance also detailed plans to offer employees at its artificial intelligence division a total of 300 million shares that track the value of its AI business, one of the people said.

The move comes as the company ramps up enticements to recruit and retain AI talent. It is already offering preferential equity arrangements that set those staffers apart from the rest of the company.

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Beijing-based ByteDance became the world’s most valuable startup after pioneering algorithmic recommendations in TikTok and its Chinese twin Douyin, yet fell behind in the ChatGPT era.

After top brass urged staff in 2024 to redouble efforts, it gained traction in AI with its Doubao chatbot, now China’s most popular, and its Seedance video-generation service.

To catch up on large language models, billionaire co-founder Zhang Yiming recently rallied the AI team around a goal of competing with industry-leading US labs within the next three years, Bloomberg News has reported.

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The company also plans to launch a sophisticated personal AI assistant to serve similar functions to Muse by Meta Platforms.

It is unclear when ByteDance or any individual parts of its business could debut on public markets.

Some existing investors have valued the company at above US$400 billion, and its value has approached US$500 billion in some secondary transactions. BLOOMBERG