A US trading firm reportedly owns 15% of TikTok-owner ByteDance, a stake potentially worth more than $15 billion. US trading firm Susquehanna reportedly owns 15% of TikTok-owner ByteDance, a stake that is potentially worth more than $15 billion. However, a spokesperson for ByteDance said that it is not working on a smartphone — but it is developing other hardware related to education. Earlier this year, ByteDance acquired some patents and the team behind a Chinese smartphone brand called Smartisan. As the deadline looms, here’s what to know about proposed plans for the app’s sale. From its birth in a Beijing apartment 12 years ago, ByteDance grew into one of the world’s biggest tech firms — best known in most countries as the creator of TikTok.
Can Trump extend the TikTok deadline again?
The company says it now routes all of its US traffic through infrastructure in the United States, and that it is deleting previously collected data. It has also said that Douyin employees do not have access to TikTok’s US user data. That 1% stake also came with a board seat in ByteDance’s Chinese entity, tech news website The Information reported in 2021. Thanks to the explosive growth of these apps, ByteDance has branched out into ecommerce and travel bookings, and also released a video editing app. For data engineering professionals, the structured approach to training data—including rigorous filtering, augmentation and expert verification—reinforces the importance of data quality as a multiplier of model performance. This could inspire more deliberate approaches to dataset development and validation pipelines.
Additional specifics about ByteDance’s supposed AI smart glasses weren’t discussed; however, the report claims the company has started “talking with suppliers” to determine the device’s features. Speculation adds that talks about its specifications, cost, and launch are also underway. ByteDance reportedly wants these two goals to be met with its AI smart glasses in a way that doesn’t compromise the device’s battery life.
ByteDance is the developer of the video-sharing social networking services and apps TikTok and Douyin, the Chinese-specific counterpart to TikTok. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that ByteDance was exploring a music streaming service with a subscription option and ad-supported free tier. The Financial Times also reported that ByteDance was looking to launch its own smartphone pre-loaded with apps that the company makes. In March, its subsidiary Lark Technologies launched a product called Lark, a productivity and workplace collaboration tool. Driven by the success of TikTok and their other apps, ByteDance’s yearly revenue ballooned to $80 billion in 2022. The company has more than 150,000 employees and operates offices worldwide.
Also, one of the most important things about ByteDance is that the company hasn’t completed ten years, and yet it has already entered the unicorn family. The company has a partnership with the Ministry of Public Security of China. The main reason behind this partnership is the public relations efforts. Additionally, the company formed ventures with Beijing municipal CCP committee, Beijing Time, and Shanghai Dongfang. Since the start of the company in 2021, Zhang Yiming has been the CEO and chairman of ByteDance.
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We integrate single-subject and multi-subject generation within a unified model. For single-subject scenarios, the longest side of the reference image is set to 512 by default, while for multi-subject scenarios, it is set to 320. UNO demonstrates remarkable flexibility across various aspect ratios, thanks to its training on a multi-scale dataset. Despite being trained within 512 buckets, it can handle higher resolutions, including 512, 568, and 704, among others.
“Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, describing the bill engulfing candle strategy as “bullying”. In a way, perhaps there’s merit behind these rumors, as during MWC 2025, Qualcomm and ByteDance announced a partnership that was more than we expected. To be clear, this partnership was between the two companies to hash out a next-gen VR headset, which would likely take the fight directly to Meta and its Quest series.
Any models related to FLUX.1-dev base model must adhere to the original licensing terms.This research aims to advance the field of generative AI. Users are free to create images using this tool, provided they comply with local laws and exercise responsible usage. The developers are not liable for any misuse of the tool by users. But in China, all that data has helped ByteDance expand its business far beyond social media and gain an edge in the global race to build advanced AI technology. When it comes to business, the company claims that ByteDance Ltd.’s business is completely separate from China’s business.
- The app enjoyed early success with young Internet users, and its user base grew substantially in 2017, when ByteDance acquired the popular video-sharing app Musical.ly, which it merged with TikTok in 2018.
- Reinforcement learning in Seed-Thinking-v1.5 is powered by custom actor-critic (VAPO) and policy-gradient (DAPO) frameworks, developed to address known instabilities in RL training.
- Also, one of the most important things about ByteDance is that the company hasn’t completed ten years, and yet it has already entered the unicorn family.
- Best known internationally for its flagship product, TikTok, ByteDance has grown into a global tech powerhouse, offering a wide range of products from video-sharing platforms to news aggregation services.
- ByteDance, founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, is a Chinese technology company that has revolutionized the global social media landscape with its cutting-edge use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
ByteDance—About
Despite the company’s grandiose success, ByteDance has faced international scrutiny as a result of accusations that the company imposes censorship in favour of the Chinese government. For example, users have accused the company of deleting articles on BaBe that were critical of the Chinese government. In 2019 TikTok user Feroza Aziz’s account was suspended after she posted a video criticizing the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghur Muslims. A ByteDance spokesman initially claimed that Aziz was suspended because of a previous offense that violated TikTok’s policies. TikTok later claimed that a “moderation error” caused the ban and offered Aziz an apology. During the temporary January shutdown, Trump promised internet hosting services and app stores that they could restore TikTok and not face legal penalties.
We believe at ByteDance that high ethical standards and a culture of integrity play a pivotal role throughout the development of the company. Therefore, we have developed the ByteDance Code of Conduct and ByteDance Partner money honey: a simple 7-step guide for getting Code of Conduct.
What Is ByteDance, The TikTok Parent In US Crosshairs?
The head of the unit was Wei-Ying Ma, and before this, he was Microsoft Research Asia’s assistant managing director. In 2016 and 2017, the company was successful in releasing different products. At that time, ByteDance acquired Flipagram, and this led to the company forming TikTok. In 2009, Zhang, along with his friend Liang Rubo developed a real estate search engine named 99fang.com.
- To be clear, this partnership was between the two companies to hash out a next-gen VR headset, which would likely take the fight directly to Meta and its Quest series.
- In 2018, ByteDance hit the lower end of its revenue target of 50 billion to 55 billion yuan ($7.2 billion to $7.9 billion), according to a Bloomberg report.
- The model is not yet available for download or use, and it’s unclear what the licensing terms will be—whether it will be proprietary/closed source, open source/free for all to use and modify at will, or somewhere in between.
- TikTok’s CEO has told Congress that the firm has never been asked by the Chinese government for US user data nor has it provided it.
- In 2008, Yiming joined Microsoft, however found it tough to cope up with the company rules of Microsoft which made him leave Microsoft to join Fanfou (Twitter clone in China).
- Different companies have different individual values that they try to encourage to focus on, and this is what makes the people’s unique strengths stronger.
Meanwhile, smartphones began to take over and more and more people started using smartphones, and Yiming could very well see the opportunity underlying it, which made him leave 99fang.com to start ByteDance in 2012. In 2018, ByteDance hit the lower end of its revenue target of 50 billion to 55 billion yuan ($7.2 billion to $7.9 billion), according to a Bloomberg report. The company lost $1.2 billion last year, reported digital media firm The Information. The app’s users spent approximately $5.5 million globally on these coins in February, an increase of about 243% from an estimated $1.6 million worth in February 2018, according to data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower. The most popular creator on YouTube, Donaldson jokingly posted about purchasing the platform the week before the January ban. After the post gained traction, he posted again, saying that “so many billionaires” had reached out to him.
When asked during a US congressional hearing in March last year if a Chinese official was on the Beijing ByteDance Technology board, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said “I believe so”. AFP, along with more than 100 fact-checking organisations, is paid by TikTok and Facebook parent Meta to verify videos that potentially contain false information. ByteDance did not respond to AFP queries about its revenues, including how much it earns from TikTok. The Chinese company says it has more than 150,000 employees in almost 120 cities around the world. The company is an example that two people full of dreams can establish a unicorn.
The company has invested billions of dollars in the infrastructure needed to power AI systems, building vast data centres in China and South-east Asia and buying up advanced semiconductors. “Although the United States has never lexatrade review found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, describing the bill as “bullying”. The app has been a diplomatic hot potato between the United States and China since the administration of former president Donald Trump, who once wanted to ban the app. Mashum Mollah is the feature writer of Search Engine Magazine and an SEO Analyst at Real Wealth Business. Over the last 3 years, He has successfully developed and implemented online marketing, SEO, and conversion campaigns for 50+ businesses of all sizes.
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