[mrdrozdov]

As others have mentioned, this hacker news headline is deceptive. The valuation is with respect to ByteDance, which has a business suite beyond TikTok. Even the article headline mentions this: "TikTok Owner’s Value Exceeds $100 Billion in Private Markets"

There are other facts about ByteDance such as having nearly 100k employees and a moderately size AI research lab that makes this news less surprising.

[toohotatopic]

>moderately size AI research lab

Isn't their AI lab actually quite good? If I remember correctly, they create personalized news stories that are actually read and consumed.

[mrdrozdov]

It isn't an ultimate metric, but they have 150+ papers listed on google scholar, which is not a small amount. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=byt...