ByteDance

ByteDance was founded in Beijing in 2012 by Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo; Liang has led it as CEO since 2021. Its first hit was Toutiao, a news app whose feed was picked by recommendation algorithms rather than by editors.

The same recommendation technology powers TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, along with the CapCut video editor, the Lark collaboration suite, TikTok Shop, Pico VR headsets and the Doubao AI assistant and models. Volcano Engine sells the company's infrastructure and AI models as a cloud. ByteDance is privately held.

The company says it has more than 150,000 employees in nearly 120 cities. Besides Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, large teams work in Singapore, Seattle, Los Angeles, London and Dublin. Its open source on GitHub includes the CloudWeGo Go microservice frameworks Kitex and Hertz, the Sonic JSON library and the Monolith recommendation system.