Will SoftBank’s latest investment make China’s ByteDance the world’s most valuable tech start-up?

SoftBank Group Corp, KKR & Co and General Atlantic plan to make a giant investment in fast-rising Chinese internet player Beijing ByteDance Technology, according to people familiar with the matter, a deal that could make it the world’s biggest start-up.

The latest round may value ByteDance, parent of news aggregator Jinri Toutiao and video sensation Tik Tok, at around US$75 billion before investment, said the people, who requested not to be named because the matter is private.

Tokyo-based SoftBank is initially targeting an investment of about US$1.5 billion, although it is unclear how big its final check will be, the people said. While KKR and General Atlantic have led discussions, the people said SoftBank could play a much bigger role if its investment approaches the outsize amounts it is known for.

Six-year-old ByteDance, which was said to be seeking around US$3 billion in the current round, started out by using artificial intelligence to personalise content for users, but has successfully branched out into short-video via a service called Douyin, known as Tik Tok overseas. That service had 500 million monthly active users as of July.

It also owns the Musical.ly app, which has about 100 million users and is being merged with Tik Tok, the company said in August.

The current deal is still in discussions and terms could change, the people said.