Advertisment

Lip-syncing app Musical.ly sold to Chinese social media giant Toutiao

author-image
CIOL Writers
New Update
music

Popular lip-syncing app Musical.ly has been sold to Chinese social media giant Toutiao. ByteDance, the company behind China’s top news aggregator service Toutiao announced the deal on Friday without disclosing the price. However, sources told the Wall Street Journal the deal was for at least $800 million.

Advertisment

Three-year-old Musical.ly was previously valued at $500 million when it raised its most recent round of funding in 2016. The startup said it will continue to run as an independent business within Bytedance, taking advantage of the distribution and tech that its new parent offers.

Toutiao has become well known for its extensive use of artificial intelligence to help build a tailored newsfeed for its user base, and in an announcement today the companies said that this tech will be used to develop Musical.ly’s reach in terms of users and creators in China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. These are regions where the company hasn’t really made a mark to date, despite the fact that its founders are Chinese and its head office is in Shanghai.

The app has grown to more than 100 million users — known as “musers” — and maintains partnerships with media giants Viacom Inc. and NBCUniversal for original content. In 2016, the company introduced live-streaming app Live.ly.

Musical.ly’s investors include Silicon Valley firms GGV Capital and Greylock Partners.

ma