As TikTok‘s ban loomed (and then was yet again delayed), it talked up the economic impact of its U.S. operations: 7.5 million American businesses use its tools, and those 7.5 million businesses employ 28 million people.
But what about the economic impact TikTok’s stateside ops have on owner ByteDance‘s wallet?
A person familiar with ByteDance’s financials told The Information that the Beijing-based giant’s international revenue, most of which is earned from TikTok U.S., jumped 63% to $39 billion in 2024. It ended up accounting for a quarter of ByteDance’s total revenue for the year ($155 billion), its highest proportion yet.
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The person also said growth in ByteDance’s Chinese operations, like Douyin, has slowed, and that it’s now depending more on what TikTok earns from American users.
That leaves it in a rough spot. If it doesn’t divest and TikTok is banned, it’ll lose that revenue completely. If it does divest in time and TikTok is able to continue U.S. operations, ByteDance will get a lump sum chunk of change, but will miss out on the app’s future American earnings. Neither option is very savory for ByteDance, for obvious reasons, but since divestment is mandatory, it’s got to make a choice.
Luckily for it, that choice involves some major players. TikTok’s list of potential suitors continues to grow, and some estimates have put its value at over $100 billion. Will ByteDance actually get that? Who knows. But if it did, that’s over three 2024s of earnings to keep its fires going while it figures out its next move.
To put TikTok’s earnings and profit in context, it’s earning more than YouTube and less than Instagram, and likely profiting less than both. YouTube earned just over $36 billion in ad revenue last year (but also brought in unspecified Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV, movie/TV rental, etc income on top of that). Instagram was estimated to have brought around $71 billion. We don’t know what percentage of YouTube’s earnings are profit, but we do know Instagram owner Meta overall made a 38% profit—$62.4 billion out of $164.5 billion revenue.
ByteDance, meanwhile, made just 6% profit in 2024, $33 billion out of $155 billion. The Information points out this is in part because ByteDance is investing heavily in AI development and data infrastructure right now, hiking its operating costs.
It also invested in ecommerce, which seemed to be paying off with TikTok Shop raking in impressive Black Friday sales. But considering TikTok just laid off a portion of its U.S.-based ecommerce team and is restructuring due to missed targets, maybe the payoff hasn’t hit quite as hard as expected.
