News. Softbank, KKR and Primavera Capital are variously in talks to invest a total of $1.5bn in Beijing Bytedance Technology, the six-year-old owner of mobile news app Toutiao and short-video app Douyin. Its TikTok (with 500m global users) is regarded as the new rival of Chinese internet giants Alibaba and Tencent. Bytedance makes most of its money from advertising placed in the apps. These latest planned investments could value the company at $75bn.‘Toutiao’ means headline. The site does not have any original writers and uses AI technology to organize daily news and give recommendations. The featured articles and videos are selected according to user locations, click and browser history, and even phone models. Toutiao has over 20,000 traditional media partners and 800,000 new media content creators. In 2017, the platform claimed 120m daily active users. With over 4,000 partnering news portals, its valuation was then set at around $20bn. It is believed that Bytedance, whose current investors include KKR, General Atlantic and Sequoia, could IPO in 2019. Phew.
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Fresh bets on $75bn Toutiao news app
