US republican senator for Florida, Marco Rubio, announced on October 9 that he was preparing to request the Committee on Foreign Investment to investigate the 2017 acquisition of the video app Musical.ly by ByteDance.
According to people familiar with the matter, the pre-IPO valuation of Kuaishou, one of China’s leading short-video start-ups, has reached $25 billion.
Several Chinese short video/live broadcast applications made it into the Top 20 of Apple’s App Store and Google Play in terms of downloads and revenue outside mainland China during the second quarter of 2019.
On Apr. 16, Kuaishou Technology, developer of leading short video applications with the same name, announced the launch of the Kuaishou Social Impact Institute.
China’s Beijing Bytedance Technology Co. announced on August 1 that it is shutting down the popular musical.ly video app and merge this short video platform into its other platform, TikTok. The two will merge as one upgraded app under the name of TikTok.
