Today, a "byte strategy and investment department dissolved, the original war investment No. 1 Zhao Pengyuan took 5 people to the president's office, responsible for the company's overall strategy; some people in the strategy and investment department transferred to the business line to do strategy" news was widely circulated on social platforms.
According to a number of sources, ByteDance will indeed lay off the strategic investment business as a whole, involving about 100 employees, and the financial investment section will be completely dissolved.
In this regard, the relevant person in charge of ByteDance responded that the company conducted an inventory and analysis of the business at the beginning of the year, decided to strengthen business focus, reduce investment with low synergy, disperse the staff of the strategic investment department into various business lines, and strengthen the cooperation between the strategic research function and the business. Planning discussions are also underway for the business and teams involved.
In the past few years, ByteDance has used capital means to integrate resources through investment and mergers and acquisitions, and has continuously built corporate barriers and expanded its ecological territory.
In terms of regional distribution, ByteDance's investment is all over the world; in the investment stage, ByteDance covers all rounds from angel rounds to acquisitions.
According to IT Orange Data and Leifeng Network incomplete statistics, from December 17, 2014 to January 18, 2022, ByteDance generated a total of 189 foreign investments. It mainly involves 17 sub-sectors such as entertainment media, corporate services, games, education, intelligent hardware, e-commerce, social networks, local life, and medical and health.
According to statistics, at present, Byte has invested a total of 47 in the field of entertainment and media, which is the largest piece of the entire investment map, accounting for nearly 25%. This is followed by corporate services, games, education and other fields. Among them, the two investments with the largest known amount of delivery occurred in the field of entertainment and media, one was spent 1.1 billion yuan to become the third largest shareholder of Palm Reading Technology, and the other was spent 1.26 billion yuan to become the largest shareholder of Hupu.
The two most notable investments in 2021, the $4 billion acquisition of game company Mu Hitomi and the 9 billion acquisition of VR company PICO, have not yet been completed.
As one of the Internet giants, ByteDance's investment layout has also been fully demonstrated in the past two years. In addition to key areas such as entertainment media, enterprise services, and games, from 2020, Byte will continue to increase its technology and start a new layout in the fields of automobile transportation, advanced manufacturing, local life, medical and health, and e-commerce.
Taking auto transportation as an example, Byte invested in ideal cars twice in a row in the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020.
It is worth mentioning that the data of enterprise investigation shows that in 2021, ByteDance participated in more than 64 investment and financing incidents, the highest in the calendar year.
However, from the perspective of investment territory, in 2021, Byte still has a lot of blood in the To B business, and 16 companies have invested in the enterprise service field alone, accounting for 25% of the investment, which is the highest in all fields.
Looking at The investment layout of ByteDance, it is not difficult to find that ByteDance has formed a situation of full bloom. Through direct investment and LP, we continue to expand the investment territory, further expand and replenish our own business and finance, and form a representative investment strategy of the Byte system.