ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, has quietly become the world’s largest social media company by revenue, surpassing Meta for the first time in the first quarter of 2025.
The company generated over $43 billion in revenue during the first three months of the year, exceeding Meta’s $42.31 billion for the same period, according to sources familiar with the matter. This marks a significant milestone as ByteDance continues its rapid growth trajectory.
ByteDance has been expanding faster than Meta overall. For all of 2024, the Chinese company brought in $155 billion compared to Meta’s $165 billion. Both companies maintained revenue growth rates above 20%, driven primarily by advertising revenue.
Despite ByteDance’s revenue leadership, the companies show a stark valuation gap. Meta’s market capitalization stands at $1.79 trillion, while ByteDance, which remains privately held, was recently valued at $315 billion in a share buyback – less than 20% of Meta’s value.
The valuation difference reflects several factors, including political risk. ByteDance faces ongoing regulatory challenges in the United States, where President Donald Trump is pushing for a sale of TikTok to avoid a potential ban. Meta also enjoys higher profit margins and dominates lucrative markets like the U.S., while ByteDance’s growth spans globally, including in China where Meta has no access.
Meta’s price-to-earnings ratio of about 27 remains slightly below its historical average, suggesting the company may not be significantly overvalued despite the market cap disparity.
Both companies are heavily investing in artificial intelligence development. ByteDance founder Yiming Zhang is personally involved in developing AI and large language models, with the company launching a team called Seed in 2023 to focus on general intelligence and frontier AI research.
Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is assembling a new Superintelligence team and announced this week that Meta will spend hundreds of billions of dollars building massive AI data centers. “We have the capital from our business to do this,” Zuckerberg said, highlighting Meta’s robust advertising-driven business model.
The revenue milestone comes as both companies face intense competition in the social media space and race to integrate AI capabilities into their platforms. ByteDance’s success demonstrates the global reach of Chinese tech companies despite geopolitical tensions.
Separately, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made his third visit to Beijing this year, confirming that Nvidia would again be able to sell its H20 chips in China as U.S. restrictions eased. Huang’s presence in Beijing, rather than at a major U.S. energy summit, underscores the importance of the Chinese market for American tech companies.
U.S. startup funding also surged to $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, representing a 75.6% increase from the previous year, driven largely by major AI investments including OpenAI’s $40 billion raise and Meta’s $14.3 billion stake in Scale AI.
