Author 丨 Zhang Rui
Editor 丨 Kang Xiao
Produced by 丨Shenwang Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
The Byte War Investment Department, which has been investing in the whole of 2021, was suddenly pressed the pause button.
According to a number of media reports, on January 18, byteDance Investment Department underwent a major adjustment, the original Byte Zhan Investment No. 1 Zhao Pengyuan transferred 5 people to the President's Office, responsible for the company's overall strategy; some personnel of the Strategy and Investment Department transferred to the business line to do strategy, the financial investment team laid off a large number of employees, and the number of layoffs was nearly 100 people. For the adjustment of ByteDance's war investment department, some sources speculate that it may be related to the new regulatory policy.
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.
It happened suddenly. A few days before the adjustment, ByteDance just invested in the ticketing platform "Shadow Tuobang" and the comic platform "Always Reading Comics", adding bricks and tiles to its own large cultural and entertainment sector.
For Zhang Yiming, who "never sets boundaries in doing things", the war investment department has become a weapon for ByteDance to continuously break through the boundaries and invest in the future. Over the past few years, ByteDance has continued to expand its investment tentacles into new areas.
ByteDance's investment path has three: one is to invest in the fields of news and information, entertainment, social networking, short video and live broadcast tools, and enterprise services around the core businesses such as content and short video; second, in addition to the core business, it has expanded investment in e-commerce, finance, games, meta-universe, chips, new consumption, real estate and other fields to find the company's second growth curve; and the third is financial investment with strategic considerations.
According to the incomplete statistics of enterprise investigation data and "Deep Net", from the end of 2014 to January 17, 2022, ByteDance invested in and merged more than 240 times, involving 18 subdivisions, of which enterprise services, entertainment, content communities and social, application tools, enterprise services, games, meta-universes, real estate, chips, etc. are the key layout tracks of ByteDance.
From the perspective of the rhythm of investment, 2021 is a big year for ByteDance's investment, mergers and acquisitions. According to the incomplete statistics of "Deep Net", in 2021, the number of investment projects by Bytes was as high as 61, and from 2018 to 2020, the number of investments in Bytes was 26, 39 and 43 respectively.
From the perspective of investment areas, ByteDance's investment is mainly domestic, supplemented by overseas investment. Since TikTok suffered a setback in overseas markets such as India and the United States in 2020, ByteDance's overseas investment has slowed down.
Education investments are off betting on corporate services and games
According to the incomplete statistics of "Deep Net", among the 18 subdivisions of ByteDance, the investment in enterprise services is the largest, about 46. The education investment previously defined by Zhang Yiming as "one of the company's three major concerns in the future" was extinguished because of the introduction of the double reduction policy last year.
ByteDance's last investment in education occurred in August 2021. Since then, byte education's Guagualong, Qingbei online school, Xuelang, campus cooperation and other businesses have been in a state of layoffs. At present, Byte has abandoned the primary and secondary school discipline training business, and only the education intelligent hardware business is still in development.
ByteDance's investment in education
Enterprise services have always been a key area of investment for ByteDance. With the accumulation of the C-end, investing in B-end enterprise services is also one of the ways for ByteDance to revitalize the stock and leverage the increment.
According to the observation of "Deep Web", ByteDance's layout in the field of enterprise services began with investment in collaborative office software. From June 2016 to March 2019, ByteDance successively invested in or acquired Team Collaboration Tool Tower, Online Collaboration Document Developer "Graphite Document", Online Document Application "Curtain", video conferencing collaboration service provider "Blue Cat Micro-Conference", etc.
In August 2019, ByteDance officially launched its own collaborative office software suite "Feishu". According to industry insiders close to ByteDance, "as early as March 2018, the company began to promote the research and development of lark, an enterprise collaboration product, but at this time, the domestic collaborative office field has been firmly controlled by the enterprise WeChat and Ali DingTalk, so Lark began to mainly face the United States, Asia-Pacific and other overseas markets, but because of the poor effect, it was opened to domestic users in August 2019 and named "Feishu".
In addition, today's headlines also acquire/invest in enterprise cloud storage and network disk synchronization service provider "Nut Cloud", data storage and retrieval technology service provider Terark, environmental protection industrial Internet solution provider "iReady IT Ehreiddi" and other enterprises.
In April 2020, ByteDance launched another subdivision of enterprise services, "Electronic Signature" (online contract signing platform), "ByteDance is filling its own gap in the enterprise service track", the above-mentioned industry insiders told Shenzhen Net.
Investments in ByteDance's enterprise services sector
Enterprise services are the track with the most investments in ByteDance in 2021, with 16 investments in 2021 alone. For example, Heipa Cloud is a code-free application construction platform, and Weisi Technology focuses on the intelligent digital platform of enterprises, and these investments can make up for ByteDance's shortcomings in enterprise services.
In addition to enterprise services, games are also one of the tracks where ByteDance 2021 focuses on layout.
"Entering the game industry is a must for ByteDance's content and commercialization, because a large proportion of ByteDance's advertising revenue comes from the game industry," guosen securities analysts once commented on ByteDance's layout in games. "From the perspective of the industrial chain, ByteDance's involvement in the game industry chain follows the logic of from channels to research and transportation, from mild leisure to medium and heavy games, and domestic and overseas at the same time."
"We are very optimistic about the direction of the game, and will patiently continue to invest," Yan Zhi, head of byte's game business, has publicly stated.
Investment in byteDance's gaming sector
ByteDance's emphasis on games can be seen in its $4 billion acquisition of Mu Hitomi Technology. On March 22, 2021, Yuan Jing, CEO of Mu Hitomi Technology, issued a full staff letter announcing that Mu Hitomi Technology and ByteDance's game business brand Chaoxi Lightyear reached a strategic acquisition agreement and maintained independent operation after the merger. According to Reuters, ByteDance's acquisition amount is about $4 billion, or about 26 billion yuan.
For the acquisition of Mu Pupil Technology, the relevant person in charge of Chaoxi Lightyear said that optimistic about the company's overseas experience and global vision, Mu Pupil Technology will continue to open up overseas markets.
In addition to Mu Hitomi Technology, byteDance's investment in The Maibo game MYBO, Zhiyu Zhishan, Gem El and other game companies are related to the game going overseas. Obviously, ByteDance refers to the determination of the overseas game market.
Keep up with the outlet "set up" metacosmology and new consumption
2021 is the first year of the meta-universe. People's imagination of metaverse concept stocks has far exceeded the metacosm concept itself. Under this outlet, Internet companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Baidu are all cutting into the meta-universe track in their own way.
ByteDance's entry into the meta-universe track is mainly based on investment in VR and XR startups, and has launched the largest acquisition of China's VR industry so far.
On August 29, 2021, VR startup Pico sent a full-staff letter disclosing that the company was acquired by ByteDance, but did not disclose the amount of the transaction. Some investors revealed to Tech Planet that the transaction price is more than 9 billion yuan.
In addition to Pico, ByteDance also invested in Hangzhou Li Weike Technology Co., Ltd. and Zhongqu Technology. The former is laying out the XR track and plans to launch mass-produced XR glasses this year; the latter mainly uses the self-developed digital twin AI 3D visual algorithm and the Internet 3D VR rendering technology to reconstruct the large scene in three dimensions.
As one of the most potential entrances to the metaverse, VR/XR may become the next generation of important terminal products after smart phones, which has also become one of the directions for ByteDance to expand its new business territory.
Outside the metaverse, ByteDance's investment in new consumption areas will increase significantly in 2021. From Houxue Liquor and Light Food Brand Shark Fei to emerging tea brands such as Manner Coffee and Lemon Tea, ByteDance has swept through many segments of the new consumption field.
Investment in New Consumption byTeDance
ByteDance's investment in new consumer brands is led by Jie Yang, who was a former vice president of Sequoia Capital. Some industry insiders revealed that startups, including lemon tea, mannar coffee, etc., are mainly contacted and audited by Yang Jie.
New consumption is a new growth point that Byte Mobilization bets on in the context of the saturation of mobile Internet traffic, after all, the example of Yuanqi Forest getting tens of billions of valuations in the 5 years of its establishment is in front of us.
ByteDance's investment in real estate and chips
In addition to the metaverse and new consumption, ByteDance has also begun to lay out chips and real estate. From September to October 2021, ByteDance invested in Resycens and Yunmaixin respectively, becoming one of the most active investment forces in this track. In the real estate field, following the investment in WheatField Real Estate, ByteDance released the news of splitting the real estate business and letting "Happiness" raise funds alone.
"Zhang Yiming's real dream is to be a Super Company, a Super Company that breaks through all the boundaries and patterns of human past business history", Chen Rui, CEO of Station B, once commented on "Late Post" Zhang Yiming.
If you want to break through all the boundaries of past business history, ByteDance, which has traffic and capital in its hands, will inevitably expand its investment territory to a wider field. The major adjustment of the Byte War Investment Department has increased uncertainty about the direction of border expansion.
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