March 20, 2023 at 5:30 AM · 3 min read. ByteDance and Tencent Holdings both released new apps recently, as China's Big Tech firms gun for new growth after nearly two years of business retreat and ByteDance was founded in 2012 by a team led by Yiming Zhang and Rubo Liang, who saw opportunities in the then-nascent mobile internet market, and aspired to build platforms that could enrich people's lives. The company launched Toutiao, one of its flagship products, in August 2012. It followed that success with the launch of Douyin in September TikTok is mostly owned by Americans. ByteDance is financed by billions of dollars from global — in particular American — investors. This complicates the conventional notion of ByteDance being a ‘Chinese company.’. Chinese tech giant ByteDance is the most valuable private technology firm in the world, on paper. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, not Beijing Douyin Information Service Limited, of which the CCP does own a share.The problem is that ‘Beijing Douyin Information Service Limited’ was actually only established as an entity back in May, as part of a re-organization of ByteDance’s org structure - so the division here is not crystal clear as TikTok wants to suggest. SHANGHAI, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The Chinese government has taken a stake and a board seat in TikTok owner ByteDance's key Chinese entity, Beijing ByteDance Technology, The Information reported TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a private company headquartered in Beijing. ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, was founded in 2012. In 2016, the company launched Douyin, the Chinese version of Douyin is China's leading destination for short-form mobile videos. Powered by easy-to-use video creation tools, Douyin quickly became a highly popular app across the country. It empowers everyone to capture and present the world's creativity, knowledge, and moments that matter in everyday life, presenting a wide and diverse range of content on TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced a grueling congressional hearing in Washington last week, with lawmakers determined to pummel the popular video-sharing app owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance L9Ay.