ByteDance's overseas revenue share hit a new high in 2025, while AI investment led to a 70% plunge in the company's net profit | Exclusive

Text by | Li Xiaoxia

Edited by | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

36Kr has exclusively learned from informed sources that ByteDance's overseas revenue in 2025 increased by nearly 50%, far exceeding the domestic revenue growth rate of about 20%. The proportion of overseas business revenue also increased from 25% in 2024 to over 30%, reaching a new high.

TikTok's e-commerce business is the main driving force behind ByteDance's overseas revenue growth. It is reported that the year-on-year growth rate of TikTok Shop's GMV in 2025 was close to 70%, which not only significantly increased ByteDance's overseas revenue share but also drove TikTok to achieve substantial profits in 2025.

However, while the overseas business helped ByteDance's revenue continue to climb, the company's net profit in 2025 decreased by more than 70%. The above-mentioned informed sources said that the significant decline in net profit was because ByteDance significantly increased its investment in AI business in the third and fourth quarters of last year. This huge investment also caused the company's net profit margin to decline significantly year-on-year in 2025.

36Kr contacted ByteDance's relevant person in charge to verify the above data, but as of press time, no response was received.

In the past year, for ByteDance, in addition to the implementation of the operation plan for TikTok's US business, the rapid growth of the international e-commerce business and the substantial investment in AI business were the two most attractive points to the outside world.

In terms of the international e-commerce business, according to previous media reports, TikTok Shop had 400 million active consumers in 2025, and its GMV was close to the scale of 100 billion US dollars, with the fastest growth rate among mainstream overseas e-commerce platforms. The analysis company EchoTik estimated that TikTok Shop's GMV in the third quarter of 2025 was comparable to that of eBay.

According to another media report, TikTok Shop's single-month GMV in December exceeded that of Shopee in the overseas market. Looking at the regional markets, data from analysis institutions show that TikTok Shop's sales in the United States increased by 108% in 2025, and the growth in the European market exceeded 100%.

In Southeast Asia, TikTok Shop has become the second in the industry after Shopee and is approaching Shopee at a high growth rate. Latin America and Japan are new markets that TikTok Shop expanded into in 2025. The GMV in Brazil increased by 25 times in the first three months after its launch, and the GMV in the Japanese market increased by 20 times within four months of its launch.

In terms of investment in AI business, after the substantial investment in the third and fourth quarters of 2025, according to the above-mentioned informed sources who revealed to 36Kr, ByteDance recently revealed in the process of communicating with shareholders that it expects to further increase its investment in technical resources in 2026. Coupled with the impact of the newly established data security joint venture in the US market, it is expected that the company's net profit margin will continue to be under pressure in the short term.

Previously, foreign media reported that ByteDance's total capital expenditure in 2026 will also increase significantly, and more than half of the increase will be specifically used for the procurement of artificial intelligence processors and the construction of related infrastructure to meet the computing power requirements for the training and inference of its artificial intelligence large models.

ByteDance did not comment on the report.