The Chinese owner of video-sharing mobile app TikTok, ByteDance Ltd., was reported to be planning to make Singapore its beachhead for the rest of Asia as part of its global expansion. This piece of news was provided by “people who are familiar with the matter”, according to Bloomberg.
It was also reported that ByteDance will be spending several billion dollars over the next three years in Singapore, and that it will “add hundreds of jobs”. The people who revealed the information said that the company had also applied for a license to operate a digital bank.
“The investment would come at a crucial time as the technology firm is forced to sell TikTok operations in the U.S. under pressure by the Trump administration.”
Those people, who asked not to be identified, added that the plans laid out for Singapore would include the establishment of a data centre. The operations at the data centre include TikTok and Lark, which is an enterprise collaboration platform.
Currently, ByteDance has more than 200 job openings in Singapore ranging from payments to e-commerce and data privacy, as stated on the company’s website. It was reported that the Beijing-based company already has 400 employees who are working on sales, technology and marketing in Singapore.
This piece of news came out after the President of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered ByteDance to sells its US TikTok assets. He had also threatened to ban the app if a deal does not happen in the coming weeks.