Billionaire Who Missed Out on TikTok Is Trying to Beat It
Bloomberg 6 hrs ago Zheping Huang
(Bloomberg) In 2017, Su Hua, the founder of a Chinese startup called Kuaishou Technology, was on the verge of closing the biggest deal of his career the acquisition of a fledgling video service that would become TikTok. But arch-rival ByteDance Ltd. swooped in with a better offer, and Su missed out on what has become a global sensation.
Now, the 38-year-old entrepreneur is getting some payback. In February, Kuaishou went public in Hong Kong, raising more than $5 billion on the strength of its booming video and commerce operations. ByteDance, meanwhile, tangled with the U.S. government and then got ensnarled in China’s tech crackdown, likely delaying its own initial public offering.