TikTok‘s parent company, ByteDance Ltd., is being valued at about $300 billion, one of the highest valuations in the Chinese tech company’s history, even as it struggles to maintain the presence of its popular social media application in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The valuation came in a recent buyback offer for ByteDance, the Journal said, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the matter. TikTok would be banned in the US under federal law unless ByteDance sells the app to a US owner before mid-January.
ByteDance’s valuation has risen in a series of buybacks, the Journal said, pointing to a valuation of nearly $225 billion in a takeover offer to employees in October 2023. A buyback in December 2023 raised the valuation to $268,000. million, the Journal said, citing an email from the company to investors seen by the newspaper.
President-elect Donald Trump was once in favor of the pending ban on TikTok, but more recently he has suggested that it is a bad idea.
Although any reversal or easing of the ban would be complicated, Trump’s election victory “significantly improves the outlook for TikTok, without a doubt,” former National Security Agency general counsel Glenn Gerstell said in an interview with Bloomberg. .
