ByteDance is now worth $300 billion, a fraction of rival Meta, despite growing faster

Meta took 18 years to hit $100 billion in annual revenue. ByteDance has done it in just over a decade.

11/18/24 10:15AM

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance valued itself at $300 billion in a recent buyback offer, marking one of the highest valuations ever for the Chinese tech company, The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend. That’s roughly double what AI giant OpenAI is worth, and ~5x that of e-commerce upstart Shein.

The continued uptick in the company’s valuation is perhaps no surprise given the speed of its ascent, with ByteDance’s revenue growing another ~30% last year. That took it over the $100 billion mark, a feat which only one other social media platform has achieved (Meta), and it’s showing few signs of slowing down: a report from The Information detailed that ByteDance has grown 35% in the first half of this year, which could put it on track to hit $145-150 billion in sales for 2024.

ByteDance revenue vs. Meta — Sherwood News

With Reuters reporting that ByteDance has no IPO plans in sight, the buyback program is a way of providing the company’s shareholders — who are sitting on a potential goldmine — with liquidity. The recent deal is the third buyback program since 2022. The round in December 2023 boosted its valuation to $268 billion.

Going vertical

You could argue that ByteDance’s valuation is not that high on a relative basis. Meta’s market cap (~$1.4 trillion) is more than 10x its latest full-year of revenue — ByteDance’s is just 2.7x its own. That reflects a few differences, including the fact that ByteDance is not a pure advertising company in quite the same way Meta is, generating a substantial portion of its sales from e-commerce (which likely produces a slimmer margin).

It might also partly reflect the prospect of a looming TikTok ban in the US, where the app has 170 million users. Largely in the context of national security concerns, President Biden signed a law this April that gave ByteDance until early January to sell TikTok or face a ban. Former president Trump once favored the pending ban but recently reversed his stance.

Rani Molla2m

OpenAI’s models are officially coming to Amazon

Amazon is finally getting in on the hottest ticket in tech.

After Microsoft announced yesterday that it had agreed to give up its exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s models, Amazon, as expected, will start offering them to customers — something AWS CEO Matt Garman says users have been asking for “for a really long time.” Some models are available now in preview, and the most powerful GPT versions will show up “in the coming weeks.”

This is a big shift in the AI cloud wars. Microsoft’s early bet on OpenAI gave Azure an edge by locking up the most in-demand models. Now that exclusivity is gone, Amazon and other competitors can finally offer them too, closing a key gap and competing more directly for AI customers.

Amazon Set to Sell OpenAI Tech After Microsoft Cedes Exclusivity

Claire Yubin Oh3h

Ship-tracking app surges as Iran war continues

As Middle East peace talks stretch on, with Tehran reportedly offering to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US lifts its blockade and the war ends, the owner of shipping intelligence platform MarineTraffic revealed that the app has gained millions of new users since the conflict began.

MarineTraffic’s user count jumped to 8.5 million this April, up from 3.5 million a year ago, the cofounder of its parent company, Kpler, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Paid subscribers, often workers within companies and governments looking for more data on supply chains and commodities trading, rose 11,000 in the same period.

Kpler, which also owns shipping intelligence platform FleetMon, draws its data from a range of sources, including the Automatic Identification System, satellites, and more than 500 people on-site, like port terminal operators.

Per Appfigures data, MarineTraffic is estimated to have raked in almost $1 million across March and April in app revenue (through April 27), more than double the ~$346,500 from the same months last year. Across the full year, Kpler expects to earn between $300 million and $400 million in annual recurring revenues.

Rani Molla

pedal to the meta

Meta could be getting ready to post its highest revenue growth since 2021

Meta’s outlook and analyst estimates suggest more than 30% revenue growth in Q1.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visits U.S. Capitol for Senate meetings

Tom Jones8h

Google will supply AI models to Pentagon in classified deal, per The Information

Google has become the latest tech company to ink an agreement to supply the Department of Defense (War) with AI, having reportedly closed a classified deal that allows the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose,” according to The Information.

The Information initially reported talks between the Alphabet-owned company and the US government around two weeks ago, following the messy breakdown of the relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration — and the rushed OpenAI deal that took its place.

The move has reportedly sparked opposition among Google employees, with The Washington Post reporting that over 600 workers signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai to ask him to bar the Defense Department from using the company’s AI models for any classified work.