Bytedance financing prospects fuel talk of value surge

Beijing Bytedance Technology Co Ltd, parent company of China's popular news aggregator Toutiao and short-video app Douyin, may raise around $1.5 billion in a new round of financing from SoftBank and Primavera Capital, which could value the 6-year-old startup at as much as $75 billion, according to a report by tech media outlet The Information.

The talks are still ongoing and a deal may not be signed, the report said. In addition, private equity firm KKR, one of the current investors of Bytedance, is also in talks in this round of investment.

In August, a report by Financial Times said Bytedance is expected to be listed next year. The company owns more than 10 apps in China and overseas, including Toutiao with 120 million daily active users and TikTok with 500 million global users, and has been regarded as the new competitive rival of Chinese internet giants Alibaba and Tencent.

Toutiao's latest round of fundraising could be traced back to the end of 2016, when the $1 billion fund from investors including Sequoia Capital and CCB International valued it at more than $11 billion, All Weather TMT reported.

Over the past few months, financing or IPO news about Bytedance kept surfacing, but the company denied the reports. Bytedance also refused to comment on the latest financing news, All Weather TMT reported.

Since this year, Bytedance has been expanding its businesses in the areas of online education, gaming and cash loans.

It launched the online English study platform Gogokid for children under the age of 12 in May, added a gaming section on the Android version of the Toutiao app in June, and released a personal consumption loan service in the Toutiao app in July, the report said.