TikTok owner ByteDance looks to expand in US, Canada and Australia amid rising competition and political headwinds

ByteDance, which owns global short video hit TikTok, is looking to expand in Silicon Valley in the United States, and also in Canada and Australia as the sector continues to boom and amid rising competition.

The company is in talks to sublease a large office building on Coleman Avenue in San Jose, California, according to a report by the Bay Area News Group last week.

Meanwhile, it is looking for talent – mainly computer engineers – to join its expanded operations in Canada and Australia to work on apps including TikTok, video editor CapCut and social media and lifestyle app Lemon8, according to a report on Thursday by Chinese media outlet Jiemian.

In addition to hiring new staff, ByteDance is also transferring existing employees from other regions to some of the new locations. For example, it has relocated 120 people working across product, operations, and research and development from China to Canada and Australia, according to the Jiemian report.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The expansion comes as ByteDance seeks to maintain its business momentum amid rising competition and political headwinds.

Its flagship app TikTok said in 2021 that its monthly active users (MAU) surpassed 1 billion. CapCut’s MAU has hit 200 million, according to a March report by Baijing, a blog that covers Chinese companies doing business overseas.

Although ByteDance has retreated in video gaming, it is doubling down on e-commerce by leveraging the popularity of TikTok. It has set an ambitious target for its US shopping operation to increase tenfold to US$17.5 billion in gross merchandise volume this year, according to a Bloomberg report.

The company’s overall revenue expanded around 30 per cent in 2023 to more than US$110 billion, outpacing projected growth at Meta Platforms and Tencent Holdings, according to a December Bloomberg report.