In 2009,software engineer and entrepreneurZhang Yiming collaborated with his friend Liang Rubo to co-found 99fang.com, a real estate search engine.[10] In early 2012, the pair rented an apartment inZhongguancun and, along with several other 99fang employees, began developing an app that would usebig data algorithms to classify news according to users' preferences, which would later becomeToutiao.[11] That March, Yiming and Liang founded ByteDance.[12]
In March 2012, ByteDance launched its first app, calledNeihan Duanzi (内涵段子, lit. "profoundgags"). This allowed users to circulate jokes, memes, and humorous videos. Before being forced by theChinese government to shut down in 2018,Neihan Duanzi had over 200 million users.[13]
In August 2012, ByteDance launched the first version of news and content platform Toutiao (头条, lit. "headlines"), which would become their core product.[14]
In January 2013, in an attempt forcommercialism andnationalism, a four-part plan for the future was presented to executives. Part four of the plan was to build an English version of Toutiao to gain users in English-speaking countries. At the time, there was an app race for video views and the attention of phone users.[15]
In March 2016, ByteDance established its research arm, called the ByteDance AI Lab. It is headed byWei-Ying Ma, the former assistant managing director ofMicrosoft Research Asia.[16][17]
From late 2016 until 2017, ByteDance made a number of acquisitions and new product launches. In December 2016, it invested in the Indonesian news recommendation platform BABE.[18] Two months later, in February 2017, ByteDance acquired Flipagram, which was later rebranded to Vigo Video (Hypstar) in July 2017.[19] Vigo Video later shut down permanently on 31 October 2020. In November 2017, ByteDance acquiredmusical.ly for an estimated US$1 billion. At the time of acquisition, TikTok was only available in India and musical.ly was available globally. In order forTikTok to go global, ByteDance merged musical.ly with TikTok on 2 August 2018, keeping the name TikTok. Another notable acquisition includes News Republic fromCheetah Mobile in November 2017.[20]
Since 2018, ByteDance has been in litigation withTencent.[21]: 109 ByteDance and its affiliates brought a series ofunfair competition lawsuits against Tencent, alleging that Tencent was blocking their content.[21]: 109 As of at least early 2024, these lawsuits had not reached resolution, largely due to disputes about jurisdiction.[21]: 109 Tencent filed two lawsuits against ByteDance and its affiliates, alleging that they were using WeChat and QQ profiles without authorization and illegally crawling data from public WeChat accounts.[21]: 109 Tencent obtained an injunction barring ByteDance from this practice.[21]: 109
In December 2018, ByteDance sued Chinese technology news site Huxiu for defamation after Huxiu reported that ByteDance-owned Indian news app Helo was propagatingfake news.[22]
In March 2021, theFinancial Times reported that ByteDance was part of a group of Chinese companies that aimed to deploy technology to circumventApple's privacy policies.[23][24]
In April 2021, ByteDance announced that it had created a new division called BytePlus to distribute the software framework underlying TikTok, so that others may launch similar apps.[25]
In August 2021, ByteDance acquired Pico, an Oculus-likevirtual reality startup.[26]
In June 2022, theFinancial Times reported on a culture clash at ByteDance's London office that has led to a staff exodus.[27]
In March 2023,TheWall Street Journal reported that former employees allege that the company engages in a practice called "horse racing," in which several teams are assigned to build the same product.[28] When one version is deemed to perform better, the team designing the better version is provided with more support.[28]
In April 2023, ByteDance filed a trademark for a book publisher called 8th Note Press.[29]
In December 2023,The Verge reported that ByteDance used OpenAI'sAPI for its owngenerative AI projects. Afterwards,OpenAI announced that while usage by ByteDance was minimal, its account has been suspended pending further investigation whether anyterms of service were violated. ByteDance stated that it had been licensed for using the API outside the Chinese market, its own chatbot is available only within China, andChatGPT-generated data have been deleted from ByteDance's training data since the middle of 2023. Scraping existing AI models is a common shortcut for smaller companies but considered unusual for the likes of ByteDance.[30]
In May 2024, ByteDance laid off "a large percentage" of the 1,000 employees from its global user operations, content, and marketing teams. The global user operations team was disbanded, and remaining employees were reassigned.[31][32]
In February 2025, ByteDance displayed OmniHuman-1, an AI system which can create realistic videos from a single image combined with motion signals such as audio or video clips. OmniHuman-1 is not available for public use.[34]
ByteDance's owners include investors outside of China (60%), its founders and Chinese investors (20%), and employees (20%).[39] In 2021, thestate-ownedChina Internet Investment Fund purchased a 1% stake in ByteDance's main Chinese subsidiary, Beijing ByteDance Technology (formerly Beijing Douyin Information Service), as agolden share investment[40][41][42] and seated Wu Shugang, a government official with a background in government propaganda, as one of the subsidiary's board members.[43][44][45]
Zhang Yiming was ByteDance's chairman and CEO from its founding in 2012 until 2021, when co-founder Liang Rubo took over as CEO.[47]
On 19 May 2020, ByteDance and Disney released an announcement that Kevin Mayer, head of Disney's streaming business, would join ByteDance. From June 2020 to his resignation 26 August 2020, Mayer was the CEO of TikTok and the COO of ByteDance, reporting directly to the company CEO Zhang Yiming.[48][49] In 2021, Shou Zi Chew, former CFO ofXiaomi, took over as TikTok CEO.[50]
ByteDance has a strategic partnership with the ChineseMinistry of Public Security for the ministry'spublic relations efforts.[57] The partnership also said that ByteDance would work with the Ministry of Public Security in cooperation on unspecified "offline activities."[58][59]
In 2018, ByteDance helped to establish the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, an initiative backed by theMinistry of Science and Technology and the Beijing municipal government.[54][60]
In 2019, ByteDance formed joint ventures with Beijing Time, a publisher controlled by theBeijing municipal CCP committee, and with Shanghai Dongfang, a state media firm in Shanghai.[61][62] In 2021, ByteDance announced that its partnership with Shanghai Dongfang had never been in operation and was disbanded.[63]
ByteDance spent more than $17.7 million on lobbying from its first report in 2019 up to July 2023,[71] and its 2023 lobbying expense added up to $8.7 million.[72]
In March 2024, ByteDance responded to ad campaigns by anti-TikTok advocacy groups calling to ban the app by launching its own $2.1 million marketing campaign acrossswing states that had vulnerableSenate Democrats up forre-election.[73]
First released to the public in April 2020,CapCut is avideo editing software made for beginners.[74] As of March 2023[update], CapCut has more than 200 million active users each month, and according toThe Wall Street Journal, it was downloaded more than theTikTok app in March 2023.[75] In March 2023, it was the second-most downloaded app in the U.S. behind that for Chinese discount retailer,Temu.[28]
First released to the public in September 2016, Douyin (Chinese:抖音;pinyin:Dǒuyīn), previously named A.me, is the Chinese version of TikTok. The application is a short-form video social media platform that differs from its international counterpart version by having more advanced features.[76] TikTok and Douyin have almost the same user interface but no access to each other's content. Their servers are each based in the market where the respective app is available.[77]
First released to the public in 2019, Lark is ByteDance's enterprise collaboration platform.[78] Lark was originally developed as an internal tool, becoming ByteDance's primary internal communication and collaboration platform, but was eventually made available to external users in certain markets.[79]
First released to the public in September 2017, TikTok is avideo-sharingsocial networking service[80] used to make short-form videos, from genres like dance, comedy, and education.[81][82] On 9 November 2017, ByteDance acquiredShanghai-based social media start-upMusical.ly for up toUS$1 billion. They combined it and prior acquisition Flipagram[83][84] into TikTok on 2 August 2018, keeping the TikTok name.
Formerly known asResso, TikTok Music launched inIndonesia andBrazil in July 2023.[85] On 19 October 2023, TikTok Music premiered in Mexico, Singapore and Australia.[86]
The platform allows users to highlight and share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content with each other alongside streaming of full-length tracks.[87] ByteDance says that it has licensing agreements in place withWarner Music Group,Sony Music Entertainment,Merlin Network andBeggars Group, among others.[88] Resso was shut down in India in January 2024, due to "local market conditions".[89][90]
On 24 September 2024, ByteDance announced that TikTok Music would shut down on 28 November 2024.[91]
Toutiao (Chinese:今日头条;pinyin:Jīnrì Tóutiáo), launched in August 2012,[14] started out as a newsrecommendation engine and gradually evolved into a platform delivering content in various formats, such as texts, images, question-and-answer posts,microblogs, and videos.[92][93]
In January 2014, the company created the "Toutiaohao" (头条号) platform to attract more content creators. Later in the year, it added video capabilities. Toutiao used interest-based and decentralized distribution to helplong tail content creators find an audience.[94]
In 2017, Toutiao acquired Flipagram. ByteDance would later expand Toutiao's features to include: a missing person alerts project whose alerts have helped find 13,116 missing persons as of June 2020;[95] short-form video platform Toutiao Video, later rebranded asXigua Video (西瓜视频, also known as Watermelon Video), which hosts video clips that are on average 2–5 minutes long;[96] and Toutiao Search, a search engine.[97]
Initially launched as Toutiao Video in 2016, Xigua Video (Chinese:西瓜视频;pinyin:Xīguā shìpín) is anonline video-sharing platform that features user-created short and mid-length videos and also produces film and television content.[98]
Initially launched in 2019, Nuverse has launched as a video game publisher company.[99] The first game launched outside mainland China was Warhammer 40,000: Lost Crusade in 2021. Later in 2021,Moonton became a subsidiary of Nuverse, after winning the bid, initially set byTencent.[100][101]
In 2022, the studio has launchedMarvel Snap in October worldwide, after closed alpha testing in thePhilippines, and gradually entering open beta with the first country beingNew Zealand. In November 2023,Reuters reported ByteDance was restructuring Nuverse and retreating from gaming.[102]
On January 18, 2025, Marvel Snap was banned in the United States, but service has been restored since January 21 followingTrump's inauguration of delayingPAFACA.[103] On January 27, the game re-added to theApp Store.[104]
Gogokid was launched in May 2018 as an online English learning platform for children that provides one-on-one classes with native English speakers.[108] In August 2021, ByteDance announced that the app business will be shuttered and most of Gogokid's staff will be laid off, following new regulations imposed on the after-school tutoring industry in China.[109]
Neihan Duanzi, ByteDance's first app, was shut down in 2018 following a crackdown by the national media regulator.
Party Island (Chinese: 派对岛; pinyin:Pàiduì dǎo) is a social media app that allows users to create avatars, join virtual events like concerts, and chat with other participants. It also has a messaging function within the app, so users can send texts to each other privately and join group chats. It is open to public testing in July 2022.[112]
TopBuzz was a content platform for videos, articles, breaking news and GIFs.[113] It was launched in 2015 and abandoned in 2020 due to dwindling business.[114][115] Former employees alleged that TopBuzz was used to push soft content messaging sympathetic to China in overseas markets; this was denied by ByteDance.[113]
8th Note Press, a publisher established by ByteDance in 2023.[29] In June 2025, 8th Note Press abruptly shutdown and returned publication rights to authors.[116]
Censorship, surveillance, and data privacy concerns
In September 2024, theFederal Trade Commission released a report summarizing 9 company responses (including from ByteDance) to orders made by the agency pursuant to Section 6(b) of theFederal Trade Commission Act of 1914 to provide information about user and non-user data collection (including of children and teenagers) and data use by the companies that found that the companies' user and non-user data practices put individuals vulnerable toidentity theft,stalking, unlawful discrimination, emotional distress andmental health issues, social stigma, and reputational harm.[128][129][130]
In April 2018, China's state media regulator, theNational Radio and Television Administration (NRTA), ordered the temporary removal of Toutiao and Neihan Duanzi from Chinese app stores. The NRTA accused Neihan Duanzi in particular of hosting "vulgar" and "improper" content and "triggering strong sentiments of resentment among internet users".[131] The following day, Neihan Duanzi announced it was permanently shutting down.[131] In response to the shutdown, Yiming issued a letter stating that the app was "incommensurate withsocialist core values" and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the authorities to promote their policies.[132][133] Following the shutdown, ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors from 6,000 to 10,000 employees.[134][135][136]
As of 2019[update], ByteDance's Beijing headquarters has maintained an office where cybersecurity police are stationed so that illegal content can be instantly reported.[137][138] In November 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered ByteDance to remove "slanderous" information onFang Zhimin from Toutiao.[139] In April 2020, the CAC ordered ByteDance to take down its office collaboration tool,Lark, because it could be used to circumventInternet censorship.[140] In January 2021, Chinese regulators fined ByteDance for spreading "vulgar information."[141][142] In April 2021, ByteDance was among 13 online platforms ordered by thePeople's Bank of China to adhere to tighter data and financial regulations.[143] The bank stated that ByteDance must conduct comprehensive self-examination and rectification to adhere to the country's laws.[144] In May 2021, the CAC stated that ByteDance had engaged in illegal data collection and misuse of personal information.[145]
In April 2022, ByteDance announced that it would report users' content on Toutiao and Douyin that engaged in "historical nihilism" in contradiction of official CCP history.[146]
In November 2023,Forbes reported that ByteDance's internal workplace tool called Feishu, which contains "product network security, data security, personal information, and daily operations," was accessed by the CAC and other Chinese government authorities in the run-up to the20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.[137]
Citing national security issues theIndian Government banned CapCut and TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on 29 June 2020.[148] The ban was made permanent in January 2021.[149][75] In March 2021, the Indian government froze ByteDance's bank accounts in the country for alleged tax evasion, which ByteDance disputed.[150]
In December 2022, Taiwan'sMainland Affairs Council announced an investigation into ByteDance on suspicion of operating an illegal subsidiary in the country.[152] The company reportedly registered "Tiktoktaiwan Co Ltd" in March, which changed its name to "ByteDance Taiwan" in November.[153]
In 2019, ByteDance's subsidiary TikTok was fined by theFederal Trade Commission (FTC) for violating theChildren's Online Privacy Protection Act.[154][155] In response, ByteDance added a kids-only mode to TikTok which blocks the upload of videos, the building of user profiles, direct messaging, and commenting on other's videos, while still allowing the viewing and recording of content.[156] In August 2024, the FTC and U.S. Department of Justice filed a joint lawsuit alleging violations of the 2019consent decree with the FTC.[157]
TikTok and ByteDance have come under US lawmaker scrutiny due to fears of surveillance by theChinese government.[158] U.S.President Trump wanted TikTok to be sold or be banned from app stores in the country. Hisexecutive orders were later blocked by the courts and revoked by his successorJoe Biden.[159][160][161][162] On 28 August 2020, China announced an update to its export control rules that, according to experts, could give Chinese authorities a say in any potential sale of ByteDance's technology to foreign firms.[163]
In March 2024 theHouse of Representatives passeda bill which, if passed through the Senate and signed by the President, forces ByteDance to divest TikTok or have the platform banned.[167] In April, theUnited States Congress passed a modified version of the bill in a foreign aid package.[168][169] The bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden on 24 April 2024, giving ByteDance until 19 January 2025, to divest TikTok. At approximately 10:29 P.M EST, ByteDance, along with its subsidiaries, was banned in the United States.[170]
In November 2024, Donald Trump changed his opinion and spoke out against a ban of the platform in the US after ByteDance investor Jeff Yass had donated to his election campaign.[171] On January 18, 2025, along withTikTok, four more ByteDance apps were banned in the United States, which includedCapCut,Lemon8, Gauth and Hypic because of a US bill.[172]
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^文化"走出去"的方式有很多 短视频应用出海成小潮流 [There are many ways to 'go global' for culture, short video applications are becoming a trend].New.QQ.com (in Chinese).Archived from the original on 23 August 2020. Retrieved12 January 2018.
^Ye, Josh (15 March 2024)."TikTok ban bill: What we know about Tiktok's Chinese owner".Reuters. Retrieved15 March 2024.Like with most big Chinese companies, China's ruling Communist Party has set up a party branch at ByteDance - in 2014, according to state media, raising concerns about Beijing's influence over the company.
^Wang, Yaqiu (24 January 2020)."Targeting TikTok's privacy alone misses a larger issue: Chinese state control".Quartz.Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved18 July 2020.Many companies have an internal party committee as part of their governance structure. ByteDance has one, headed by the company's vice president Zhang Fuping, and has since 2017. Party committee members at ByteDance regularly gather to study Party General Secretary Xi Jinping's speeches and pledge to follow the party in technological innovation.
^"党支部——中国互联网公司的标配" [Party branch—the standard feature of Chinese Internet companies].China Digital Times (in Chinese (China)). 9 August 2020.Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved19 December 2023.
^全国公安新媒体矩阵入驻今日头条、抖音仪式在京举行 [A Ceremony is held in Beijing for the Ministry of Public Security's 'New Media Matrix' Launching an Account in Toutiao and Douyin].Sohu (in Chinese). 25 April 2019.Archived from the original on 11 August 2020. Retrieved11 August 2020.
^Andrews, Natalie; Kristina, Peterson (31 March 2024)."Early Clues Emerge on Senate's Plans for TikTok".The Wall Street Journal.Archived from the original on 1 April 2024. Retrieved1 April 2024.The company started a $2.1 million marketing campaign across Senate battleground states such as Nevada, Montana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, all represented by vulnerable Senate Democrats running for re-election this year. The ads will run on television, as well as on billboards and bus stops.
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