The owner of social media platform TikTok will reportedly invest billions in Singapore as part of its plan to use the country as its launchpad for expansion in Asia.

News of ByteDance's plans was confirmed by both Bloomberg and Reuters who spoke to anonymous sources familiar with the matter. ByteDance is the company that owns TikTok.

The investments — which will occur over the next three years — will be accompanied by the recruitment of hundreds of employees in Singapore.

However, Reuters reported that it won't involve setting up new data centres in Singapore, with their sources saying the Beijing-based firm had stepped up the purchase of cloud-computing servers in Singapore to back up United States data for contingency.

Forced to sell by President Trump

According to Bloomberg, the investment comes at a "crucial time" for ByteDance — it is currently under pressure from the U.S. government to sell its U.S. TikTok operations or risk being banned.

President Donald Trump has set a Sep. 15 deadline for the company to do this, though ByteDance is unlikely to make the sale by then.

"It'll either be closed up or they'll sell it," he told reporters on Sep. 10, closing the door on any chance of an extension.

Trump had justified the sell-or-bust order by citing national security concerns; there is a vast amount of private data on the app according to Reuters.

More than S$4.1 billion in profits

Apart from TikTok, ByteDance also owns news aggregation app Toutiao and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok.

Altogether, the company has over 1.5 billion monthly active users across its platforms.

According to Bloomberg, this popularity has helped ByteDance to generate more than S$4.1 billion in profits.

ByteDance is also leading a consortium that has applied for a digital-bank licence in Singapore.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore will be awarding up to five such permits by December this year.

Top image from Swapnil Bapat via Unsplash and TikTok

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