{"text":[[{"start":9.93,"text":"This article only represents the author's own views."}],[{"start":14.03,"text":"Potentially worth more than $600 billion in a recent proposed transaction, ByteDance is no longer being valued like the owner of a single hit app. That’s how much the parent of the Douyin and TikTok short video apps could be worth after a current investor looking to sell its stake at an initial $550 billion valuation raised its price after finding strong buyer interest, the South China Morning Post reported last week."}],[{"start":42.92,"text":"That super-sized valuation speaks volumes about what investors think ByteDance has become, namely China’s second most valuable internet company, slightly behind Tencent’s (0700.HK) $650 billion and twice as big as Alibaba’s (BABA.US; 9988.HK) $300 billion."}],[{"start":61.05,"text":"That headline figure raises the question of which businesses are doing the heavy lifting for a company whose portfolio includes the Douyin and TikTok short video apps at its core, along with a host of smaller but influential others like Toutiao, CapCut, Lark and Feishu. The hierarchy is relatively clear: Douyin and TikTok are kings, while AI through the company’s Doubao app is the fast-rising star supporting the latest premium."}],[{"start":93.83,"text":"The center of gravity starts in China. While TikTok is known to the world, Douyin is a household word in China, where it has become the platform of choice for advertisers and product sellers alike over e-commerce stalwarts like Alibaba, JD.com (JD.US; 9618.HK) and PDD (PDD.US), and where it increasingly also competes with Meituan (3690.HK) in online-to-offline local services."}],[{"start":125.36,"text":"Douyin: The domestic anchor"}],[{"start":129.54,"text":"To understand why ByteDance can command this kind of valuation, the first place to look is Douyin. While it started as a short video app, Douyin has evolved to include its cash-spinning Douyin E-commerce, which generated about 3.5 trillion yuan in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2024, up roughly 30% from a year earlier, according to market estimates. Official platform data released this year said shelf-based e-commerce GMV rose 49% over the prior 12 months, while the number of merchants rose 45%. Douyin also said more than 80,000 new merchants crossed 1 million yuan ($146,000) in livestream transaction value."}],[{"start":180.53,"text":"Those numbers point to a change in how shopping happens on Douyin. Put simply, Douyin is increasingly looking like a place where people go to shop, rather than simply to watch videos and make occasional purchases when something catches their eye."}],[{"start":196.46,"text":"That helps explain the battlefield Douyin is now fighting on. It is no longer just a platform where brands buy ads or influencers peddle products. Instead, it has become a more direct rival with Alibaba, JD.com and PDD’s Pinduoduo. The battle doesn’t stop at shopping. Through its local-services push, Douyin is also trying to turn short-video traffic into restaurant deals, hotel bookings and other offline spending, which compete with Meituan’s offerings. Estimates put Douyin Life Services’ 2025 payment GMV at more than 850 billion yuan, up 59% year on year."}],[{"start":240.55,"text":"That’s why Douyin is such an important piece in ByteDance’s current valuation: it’s the clearest example of how the company is turning content into a broader commercial ecosystem offering not only entertainment, but product sales and services."}],[{"start":257.79,"text":"TikTok: essential but harder to value"}],[{"start":261.42,"text":"If Douyin is ByteDance’s domestic cash anchor, TikTok is its global growth engine. ByteDance’s international sales rose 63% to about 280 billion yuan in 2024, contributing roughly a quarter of total revenue, with much of that coming from TikTok, according to a Bloomberg report."}],[{"start":285.32,"text":"But TikTok is also harder to value than Douyin due to geopolitics. Following U.S. government pressure, TikTok’s U.S. business that was its largest asset has been restructured into a venture that’s 80.1% owned by American and global investors, with ByteDance holding the remaining 19.9%. At the same time, some commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising and marketing, remain under ByteDance’s existing U.S. entities. In other words, TikTok is still central to ByteDance’s global story, but has become a more complicated asset."}],[{"start":324.45,"text":"Oracle has valued its 15% stake in the U.S. venture at about 13.3 billion yuan, implying ByteDance’s 19.9% is worth about 19 billion yuan and the joint venture itself is worth roughly 95.4 billion yuan. But the joint venture is only part of TikTok’s U.S. operation, and ByteDance also still wholly owns TikTok’s operations in other lucrative global markets like Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America."}],[{"start":356.28999999999996,"text":"AI is the premium"}],[{"start":358.33,"text":"If Douyin is ByteDance’s crown jewel with TikTok in a more supporting role, AI looks like the company’s rising star that’s still a diamond in the rough. Of ByteDance’s plans to reportedly spend about 160 billion yuan on capital expenditure this year, roughly 85 billion yuan – or more than half – is set aside for AI chips and related computing infrastructure. That suggests AI is no longer a side bet, but one of the company’s top priorities."}],[{"start":389.90999999999997,"text":"The consumer side of that push is Doubao, ByteDance’s AI chatbot. The company said this month that daily calls to the Doubao model had surpassed 120 trillion tokens by late March, doubling in three months and rising roughly 1,000-fold since its launch. It also said the number of enterprise customers whose cumulative usage topped 1 trillion tokens had risen to 140, up from 100 at the end of last year."}],[{"start":422.25,"text":"ByteDance is also trying to push Doubao into interfaces users touch every day. It has already rolled out a Doubao-powered assistant on ZTE’s Nubia M153 prototype phone, and is reportedly in talks with other handset makers. At the same time, ByteDance is extending its AI reach outside China through Cici, its overseas AI app. Its new Seedance 2.0 AI video model has also captured recent headlines for its ability to transform text into realistic, high-quality videos."}],[{"start":458.53,"text":"IPO in sight?"}],[{"start":462.27,"text":"Despite its huge size, ByteDance has shown few signals lately of rushing toward an IPO. Its shares regularly trade through private market transactions, and its private status helps it avoid the disclosure burden and extra scrutiny that come with a public float. What’s more, the company is reportedly quite profitable and doesn’t really need the billions of dollars an IPO would provide."}],[{"start":488.85999999999996,"text":"If any listings occur, they might start with one or more of ByteDance’s smaller, autonomous units rather than the crown jewels. One such candidate could be Dongchedi, also known as DCar, which is ByteDance’s automotive information and trading platform. At the same time, ByteDance could also simply sell off other non-core parts, like it reportedly did with its Moonton gaming division last month in a deal that valued the unit at $6 billion."}],[{"start":518.25,"text":"ByteDance is ultimately a puzzle with many moving parts, but also one that appears to be trying to sharpen its focus. Investors are no longer valuing it like the owner of one blockbuster app, but more like a platform that is one of China’s first truly global internet stories. Douyin is its domestic base, while TikTok supplies its global reach with a big political risk asterisk. And Doubao offers the possibility of another major growth engine."}],[{"start":559.29,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1776252122_4136.mp3"}