New Delhi
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is preparing for a big purchase in the new year. According to media reports, he can buy the American business of Chinese short video platform TikTok. The US government is preparing to ban TikTok due to security reasons. It is already banned in many countries like India. TikTok has 17 crore active users in America. In such a situation, this deal can be very beneficial for Musk. China had objection to this earlier but now it is also ready for this deal. Who is the owner of TikTok and what is his net worth…
TikTok’s parent company is ByteDance, which is the world’s second most valuable startup after Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Its valuation is close to $300 billion, which is more than India’s most valuable company Reliance Industries. The market cap of Reliance is $195.99 billion. Beijing-based company ByteDance was founded in 2012 by Singapore-based Chinese-born Zheng Yiming, who is ranked 30th in the list of the world’s top richest people. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth is $43.9 billion. Zheng, popularly known as the Short Video King, is China’s third richest man. In October last year, his net worth reached $50 billion and he became the richest man in China.
How did it start?
Apart from video sharing app TikTok, ByteDance also owns news aggregator service Toutiao. This company has more than one billion users worldwide and its revenue in 2023 was more than $110 billion. Zheng left the post of CEO of this company in May 2021. He has 21% stake in the company. Zheng was born in 1983 in Fujian province of China. After completing his degree in Software Engineering from Nankai University in 2005, he worked in several companies and then started ByteDance in 2012.
In the year 2014, the number of active users of the company reached more than 13 million. In 2015, the company launched its first international product TopBuzz and in 2017 purchased global news aggregator News Republic. But the bad relations between America and China have also affected this. The American government considers it a threat to its security and is preparing to ban it. Meanwhile, Musk has shown interest in buying it. China also has no objection to this deal because it considers Musk as its friend. Musk has invested a lot in China.
