“I saw my Tiktok life when I became a parent… I had to find ways to support my son,” Avila who is a Tiktok singer. “Tiktok makes everything easier… it’s become a lifeline.”

However the real action involving Tiktok is taking place 50 kilometers to the south, where US President Posald Trump and China’s Eng Trump- and, possibly the fate of the US Eng

For years, US officials have warned that the Chinese owner of Tiktok is giving Beijing access to US Affairs by tweeting state media algorithms. Such concerns have driven Congress to pass the so-called divstor-ban law, which threatens to boot Tiktok from US-owned stores in the US unless its owner sells the app.

In September, US officials announced that a consortium of American investors would take over Tiktok’s US arm, saving the US operation. Shortly after XI and Trump’s meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessense said The China endorsed the plan. .

The Trump administration is approaching the Tiktok Deal as a victory for Zhang Yiming and Friend Liang Rubo in Beijing, and launched Totuoo, a hit on the News Aggregator. But bydorce has become the global tech Behemoth it is now with the launch of Douyin, a short video format, in 2016, and Tiktok, International Sister Sister of Douyin, a year later.

Tiktok currently boasts over 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide. The fortunes of bydedance flowed with it, reaching a $ 400 billion valuation, making it, at one point, the most valuable startup in the world.

Now, ownership is thinking about the next big game: AI. It joined the doubao chatbot in August 2023. It came 10 months after the launch of Chatgpt and is similar to Openii questions that can answer questions, search images and videos. . In October, a bytedance executive said that the average application and business of AI business,” said Tony Peng, who writes about China’s AI Sector.

If all sides agree to Tiktok US Sold, a joint venture based in the US will use the operation of Tiktok, which is likely before the time of the January 23 23 deadline. The leak will continue with a no less than 20% stake in the new company; The rest of the share will reportedly be divided between the current investors of the bydncece of the increasingly strong Atlantic company – and new entrants, such as Learn and manage Silver Lake.

Vice President JD Vance claims that Tiktok’s algorithm is “American-run” and that the US arm will be sold for a relatively paltry $14 billion. But new reports in the Media suggest that the algorithm will remain proprietary to the leak, and the new Tiktokt US may pay a heavy fee-fee-back in half of Tiktok’s chances.

Bydedance does not disclose its financial results and declined to comment for this article, but media reports peg the revenue at $155 billion, with nearly $40 billion coming from outside China. It is estimated that the arrival of the US to hover in the US at $ 15 billion. Overall, byedancing reportedly earned $33 billion in revenue last year.

The trickle down of any money from Tiktok sales is to keep the AI ​​cutting edge.

The company’s many language models are not necessarily the strongest in China’s AI ecosystem “Bydeddance’s strength is not in traditional text Llms; it is their image and visual object,” Grace Shao, an analyst at AI Sector, points out. The Firm designs AI services AI services to Tiktok and Video Editing Pred Play Capcut, which allows users to use technology for content. (Reflection researchers won a great paper award in 2024 on neurips, sometimes called “KINGDOM of Ai, “for finding a way to generate images more efficiently.)

Lamikan yiklohberg / getty images

That means direct competition with byeddance is not only DELESEEK OR ALIBABA, Shao said; This is the HiveStreaming giant Kuaishouwhose video editing skills are sometimes the best in the world.

To maintain an advantage in the AI ​​race, byedancing needs access to powerful AI chips. Media reports claim that the acquisition of bytedance is the largest buyer of Nvidia The chips are made in China and it has started to design its own processors. Data centers are also being invested in regions such as Latin America and Southeast Asia.

All initiatives add up. In January, Reuters reported that bytedcece will mark $20 billion in capital spending for 2025. (US capital spending dwarfs even that, with Alphabet expected to spend as much as $93 billion by 2025 alone.)

At the same time, bytedcece offers the model of dirty prices to undercut rivals. Clients of the main bydedance model pay 2.6 yuan (37 cents) per million tokens. Access to Dereseeek, on the other hand, costs about 42 cents per million tokens.

And unlike big tech peers Alibaba and Tencent, bydedance’s private status means it can’t turn to the public markets for capital. Tiktoko US Death, if completed, could have the benefit of opening the opening of the first birth, and long overdue, IPO.

ByteDance was slow to join China’s AI race, but an even later entrant—DeepSeek—lit a fire beneath all contenders in January when its model, built by a tiny research lab and trained on far fewer resources, matched ChatGPT’s capabilities.

“Dereseeek is not only a wakeup call for the West, but really a wakeup call for China as well,” Shao said. Big Tech in China is increasingly happy to be “sitting on top of their hills – commerce, or social media, or whatever – and it’s reasonable to cruise.”

Now, companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and MoonShot Ai are upping their game, releasing more powerful models that often unlock the models themselves.

Whatever leaks the AI ​​decides to make, it will likely happen under the radar, at least at first. “Drip is not a company that slows itself down in the beginning,” Shao said. “They really wait until their products are mature to launch.”

As AI transforms the Tech Store sector, byedancing requires money and focus. Solving the problem of Tiktok in the US will be divided into two.

This article appears in the December 2025 / January 2026: Asia issue of wealth with the title “things without Tiktok.”