According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Chinese tech giant ByteDance decided to delay its much-anticipated IPO earlier this year at the urging of regulators in Beijing.
The firm, worth at least $180 billion per a recent funding round, was mulling an offering in the United States or Hong Kong but paused after Chinese officials asked the company to look into data security risks, the Journal reports.
ByteDance's path offers a marked contrast with ride-hailing giant DiDi, which reportedly went ahead with an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in early July after being urged by the country's Cyberspace Administration not to proceed. Following DiDi's market debut, the Cyberspace Administration of China began an investigation into its data security and ordered it to halt new user registrations in China.
According to reporting by the Financial Times, other Chinese tech companies who have delayed, reconsidered or canceled U.S. IPOs due to regulatory pressure include fitness tech company Keep, medical data company LinkDoc Technology and podcasting platform Ximalaya FM.
Protocol wrote on July 7 that following DiDi's post-IPO treatment at the hands of Chinese regulators, "Chinese firms that list stateside in the future will face higher legal and practical hurdles to convince U.S. investors and exchanges they aren't going to become 'the next DiDi.'"
The chill in overseas IPOs from Chinese tech firms could be a boon for Hong Kong. A source familiar with Ximalaya told the Financial Times that a listing there "would be regarded as a preferred outcome" for the company, which filed a preliminary prospectus with U.S. regulators in early May.