TikTok Parent ByteDance Raising $1.45 Billion to Invest in Media, AI (Report)

By Janko Roettgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – ByteDance, the company behind the wildly popular social video app TikTok, is in the process of raising a $1.45 billion fund to invest in media content and artificial intelligence, according to a report from business news site The Information.

Part of the money will come from itself, while the company is also looking to raise funding from investors linked to the Chinese government. Bytedance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the U.S., ByteDance is best known for , a social short-form video app that surpassed 500 million global monthly active users earlier this year. TikTok emerged out of China, but was able to grow its U.S. user base significantly after the company acquired Musically and then merged the two apps under the TikTok banner.

In addition to TikTok, ByteDance is also operating a number of other apps and services, including social Gif sharing platform TopBuzz, short-form video service Vigo and Chinese content aggregator Toutiao. Investments in AI technology as well as media content could help ByteDance grow a number of these assets.

ByteDance recently raised $3 billion from SoftBank and other investors, and the company is currently valued $75 billion, according to The Information. This would make the company more valuable than Uber, which was valued $72 billion earlier this year, making ByteDance the higest-valued startup in the world.