They're mostly owned by VC and private equity firms. Sequoia and Susquehanna own a large chunk of the company. The same people who own half of Silicon Valley. It's not a huge secret who's invested in ByteDance.
We can drop the facade over "fears of Chinese ownership". They're invested heavily in tons of American companies, including Twitter and Meta (who actively share data on users with the Chinese government). This is more about appeasing some Israeli lobbyists and giving a right-wing billionaire like Steve Mnuchin a growing company at a steep discount.
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