Investment firm General Atlantic has begun marketing a portion of its equity in ByteDance at an internal valuation of $550 billion, two people with direct knowledge of the situation said. If completed, the secondary sale would reflect a pronounced rise in the privately traded price of ByteDance shares.
The planned divestment would be the first sizeable secondary transaction involving ByteDance since U.S. approvals enabled a reorganisation of TikTok's U.S. operations in January. The $550 billion figure marks a 66% increase from the buyback that took place last year, when the company was priced at just over $330 billion, and is 15% higher than a November secondary deal that sources reported had pegged ByteDance at $480 billion.
General Atlantic, which first took a stake in ByteDance in 2017 when the company’s valuation was about $20 billion, began the process to sell part of its holding in recent weeks, one of the sources said. That source added that the firm hopes to complete the sale in March. Precise terms of the offering, including the size of the stake being marketed, General Atlantic’s pre-transaction shareholding and its post-transaction ownership, were not disclosed.
The two people who provided details to reporters declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak publicly. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment, and General Atlantic declined to comment on the prospective share sale.
Secondary market trades in privately held companies can vary substantially in price and structure, and each new sale functions as a gauge of investor appetite for unlisted shares. ByteDance’s market worth is not transparent because the shares are privately held and secondary market deal terms are typically not made public.
One of the sources described General Atlantic’s internal valuation of its ByteDance holding as $550 billion and said it is reasonable to assume the firm will seek that level in the secondary transaction. That same person noted that the proposed sale comes against a backdrop of recent developments that have reduced some regulatory uncertainty - including ByteDance’s agreement to make TikTok’s U.S. operations majority U.S.-owned - after earlier threats by U.S. political leaders to ban the app over national security concerns.
Another driver cited by an informed source was the lifecycle position of some of General Atlantic’s funds. Private equity vehicles typically operate on a roughly 10-12 year timetable during which capital is raised, invested and returned to investors, and several funds at the firm are approaching that endpoint, the source said.
Bill Ford, General Atlantic’s chief executive, currently occupies a seat on ByteDance’s board, a governance role noted by the sources.
ByteDance has continued to expand its revenues, surpassing the sales of Facebook owner Meta, and has been described internally as having the largest social media revenue base globally. Analysts cited within reporting on the company have suggested ByteDance’s annual profit for 2025 could reach about $48 billion.
Separately, the venture capital firm HSG - previously known as Sequoia Capital China - is raising a continuation fund intended to assume certain ByteDance positions held by its maturing funds, with that financing pitched at a valuation between $350 billion and $370 billion, sources said last month.
The proposed General Atlantic share sale underscores the rapid and sustained escalation in private market valuations for ByteDance. If executed at the discussed level, the transaction would further solidify the gains enjoyed by early and existing investors ahead of any eventual public listing of the company.
Despite the heightened valuations, the private nature of ByteDance’s capital structure means that market participants and observers must rely on periodic secondary trades and internal company and investor valuations to assess its price. As such, individual secondary deals also serve as tests of the depth and durability of investor demand for stakes in unlisted technology companies.