In a recent transaction this week, the valuation of ByteDance surged up to $480 billion, more than double than its value of $230 billion last year. A Chinese venture firm led by Kathy Xu by the name of Capitol Today has been a huge contributor to this surging increase. The firm paid $300 million for shares from the Bank of China Group Investment, as reported by Bloomberg on Thursday, November 20th, 2025.
In September, ByteDance issued an employee share buyback program at a valuation of $330 billion, sources informed Bloomberg. The stock on November 19th was originally priced at $200 million with ByteDance’s value at $360 billion before competitive bidding drove prices skyward. The final valuation was set at $480 billion, a 45% increase from September’s employee share buyback price.
The figure of $480 billion sets ByteDance close to OpenAI, with their value sitting at $500 billion, as reported from Bloomberg. SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, sits at $400 billion. Social media giant Meta has $1.49 trillion.
The increase in valuation for ByteDance enters with ongoing negotiations over TikTok’s U.S. operations. On September 25th, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order that had established a roadmap for the “qualified divestiture” of TikTok’s U.S. operations to land in American hands.
Trump had also delayed TikTok’s deadline of selling its U.S. operations for a fourth time, to December 16th. The Department of Justice was ordered not to enforce the divest-or-ban law until January 26th, 2026, that way the deal could be finalized in time. TikTok boasts 170 million users in the United States. As Bloomberg reports, half of the profit from TikTok’s U.S. operations will still go to ByteDance.
Trump claimed that the deal had the support and backing of the Chinese President, Xi Jinping. As Trump told reporters in September, “I told him what we were doing and he said go ahead with it.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that China and the United States have finalized the terms of a deal for TikTok’s U.S. operations. “We reached a final deal on TikTok,” Bessent said on Margaret Brennan’s Face The Nation.
The future of TikTok remains unknown in the United States, yet it continues to come up with new features for its users and creators. On November 19th, TikTok announced that they were testing a feature that allows users control over how much AI-based content appears on their feeds. Also, TikTok announced a $2 million fund that supports AI literacy education.
Photo Credits: www.bytedance.com, bbc.com
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