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Photo illustration by Mike SullivanByteDance’s Big Ambitions
Zhang Yiming's plans to turn ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, into a global powerhouse akin to Facebook and Google got a boost with his hiring of Disney’s Kevin Mayer. But he’ll have to go through U.S. regulators first.
Zhang Yiming, CEO of ByteDance—a $75 billion tech conglomerate from China that is behind some of the world’s most popular apps—needed help.
Late last year, TikTok, the company’s app for sharing short videos, was exploding in popularity. It became the first social app from China to hit it big in the west. But the U.S. government, locked in a tense trade war with China, was breathing down Zhang’s neck. American officials worried the company couldn’t be trusted to protect users’ private data from the Chinese government.