Apple’s Tim Cook Visits “World’s Hottest Start-Up” in Beijing

Apple CEO Tim Cook is on a visit to China at the moment, around a month after the tech giant launched their new iPhone models to a collective “meh” from the Chinese market. Yesterday, he swung by the headquarters of Bytedance in Beijing to be photographed pointing at displays and shaking hands with people.

Bytedance is the controversial company behind news app Jinri Toutiao (literally “Today’s Headlines”) and short video sensation Douyin (TikTok). It’s also “the world’s hottest start-up”, according to Bloomberg.

Related:

ByteDance Stakes a Claim in the War for Young China’s Attention

Bytedance founder Zhang Yiming — who has taken the company from scratch to a reported valuation of 75 billion USD in just six years — was on hand to personally give Cook a tour of the office and get him up to speed on the business’ incredible growth:

Cook’s visit comes after he included Douyin (TikTok) in a list of key global apps at Apple’s WWDC2018 developers conference and after representatives from the platform attended the new iPhone launch last month.

Not familiar with Douyin (TikTok)? Here’s why it’s such a big deal:

How Douyin (TikTok) Became the Most Popular App in the World

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Photos: 36kr

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