Abu Dhabi's G42 buys stake in ByteDance for $100M

The Abu Dhabi based AI Firm G42 has acquired stake for $100 million in TikTok's parent company ByteDance, with this the company valuation of Chinese media giant to $220 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Prince Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the national security adviser for the UAE bought the stock in the TikTok parent from existing investors through the company's 42XFund. Another company acquired stake in the company at $225 billion valuation, the report said.

YourStory could not independently verify this report.

This current market value is a drop from the $300 billion valuation ByteDance had during a share restructure programme in 2022. It also had received estimates of $300-$400 billion on the secondary market in 2021.

TikTok has significant popularity in the GCC region. From early last year, the top influencers in the region had doubled over the past year. The total follower of the top 10 GCC TikTok personalities grew from 24.6 million in 2020 to 120 million last year.

The two main regions that have the maximum push are UAE and Saudi Arabia with Oman and Qatar following close. Recently, TikTok had under increased scrutiny over user data concerns and was reportedly considering separating from its parent company to address these concerns, media reports said.