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UAE artificial intelligence and cloud computing company G42 has acquired a stake of more than $100 million in TikTok owner ByteDance.

The investment has valued the Chinese company at $220 billion, reports Bloomberg.

The investment was made through G42's 42XFund and was handled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, chair of G42 and National Security Advisor of the UAE.

The $220bn valuation is notably less than in previous years. In 2023 the valuation offered during a share buyback program was $300bn and the company reached valuations of up to $400bn in the secondary market in 2021.

Shortly after G42's investment, another unnamed fund bought into the company at a $225bn valuation.

Just last week, the US House passed a bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok, though this has yet to be decided on by the Senate.

Motivated by national security concerns that were first raised by former President Donald Trump, TikTok is currently in the middle of migrating US user data to Oracle servers. Should the bill go through, US operators will be unable to provide web hosting for the platform after six months if it hasn't divested operations.

Other investors in ByteDance include Sequoia Capital China, SIG Asia Investments, Coatue Management, and SoftBank Group Corp. Around two-thirds of the company's investors are non-Chinese, and the majority of those are based in the US.

G42 is an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company that offers solutions to the oil and gas sector, as well as government, healthcare, and finance. It is a stakeholder in Khazna Data Centers.

Earlier this month, it announced that it would be partnering with EcoCloud to develop a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya. The development will have an initial 100MW, but can potentially be built up to 1GW of capacity.

Originally posted here:
UAE's G42 buys $100m stake in TikTok owner ByteDance - DatacenterDynamics