Read More> By Lulu Yilun Chen and Mark Bergen
When Zhang Yiming first shopped the idea of a news aggregation app powered by artificial intelligence six years ago, investors including Sequoia Capital were skeptical.
Back then, the question was how a 29-year-old locally trained software engineer could outsmart the numerous news portals operated by the likes of social media behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd. and extract profit where even Google had failed.
Zhang, now 35, proved them wrong. Today his company, Bytedance Ltd., is on its way to a more than $75 billion valuation -- a price tag that surpasses Uber Technologies Inc. to top the world, according to CB Insights. The latest in a long line of investors who’ve come around is Softbank Group Corp., which is said to be planning to invest about $1.5 billion. Bytedance now counts KKR & Co., General Atlantic and even Sequoia as backers. Much of its lofty valuation stems from the creation of an i ..