ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is exploring a roughly $20 billion offshore loan that would dwarf its own previous borrowing records. The deal, still in preliminary discussions with banks, would represent the largest dollar-denominated corporate loan the company has ever pursued.
To put that number in perspective: ByteDance arranged a loan of $9.5 to $10.8 billion just last September. That deal was itself a record, the largest dollar-denominated corporate facility in Asia excluding Japan at the time. Now, barely nine months later, the company is looking to nearly double it.
What we know so far
The talks are early-stage. No banks have been publicly named as lead coordinators for this round, and neither pricing nor final terms have been disclosed.
ByteDance has a track record of tapping international debt markets at increasing scale. The September 2024 deal involved Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase as coordinators. Before that, the company held refinancing discussions in 2021 for a comparatively modest package valued between $3 billion and $5 billion.
