By Senad Karaahmetovic
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the popular social media app TikTok, has seen its valuation go down in the past year by $100 billion.
According to South China Morning Post, the TikTok owner’s valuation dropped to $300 billion from $400 billion in the private market.
Unpublicized sale offers published on the Chinese tech media platform 36Kr valued the social media company at between $280 billion and $350 billion.
Still, ByteDance is one of the most valuable tech companies in China, competing with other tech giants like Tencent Holdings Ltd (HK:0700) and Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA).
Chinese government tightened the short video regulations, but TikTok is still extremely popular overseas with 1 billion users across the planet. New government laws are directly affecting TikTok’s algorithm making it harder to make domestic profits, which is the main reason why the company postponed its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) last year.
In April last year, ByteDance said it has no plans to go public.
Sequoia China, one of the biggest private equity investors in ByteDance, denied a report from The Wall Street Journal that it valued the company at just $180 billion.