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TikTok Rival Triller to Consider IPO Option with SPAC

The parent company of social networking app Triller has intentions of taking its company for an IPO by partnering with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). Per a Reuters report, the SPAC option for Triller will offer a way to bypass extreme regulatory hurdles that align with the company’s intentions for going public.

A special purpose acquisition company is one that pulls funds in an initial public offering and then merges with any company intending to go public thus automatically getting such a company listed on an exchange. In the case of Triller, the intention to scale up its operations draws strength from the current challenges its rival ByteDance’s TikTok is currently facing in the United States.

Triller according to sources close to the IPO plans is also considering raising as much as $250 million in private funding which is expected to be led by investment banking giant UBS Group AG (SWX: UBSG). While this possibility has not yet been outrightly affirmed by the duo of Triller and UBS, the Reuters sources who pleaded anonymity noted that the company is at a crossroads of which funding path to follow: either the SPAC IPO or the UBS led funding round.

In its bid to clampdown on its funding limitations, Triller has raised about $100 million in private funding in the past, the sum which helped shoot up its valuation to $1.25 billion as confirmed by the sources. Whichever option opted for, Triller’s aim is to have the advantage to attract the majority of TikTok’s users and influencers alike.

The proposed Triller IPO is one of the many ways to advantage of ByteDance’s trials in the United States. Since the ban of TikTok and then to President Donald Trump rescinding the decision by giving room for U.S. investors to have a decisive stake in the company, several companies have devised means to profit from the problem.

Despite TikTok getting a US judge to block the Trump administration’s ban on the downloads of the TikTok app on U.S. App stores, companies like Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) launched YouTube Shorts primarily to compete with TikTok. Besides the move to provide competition to lure TikTok’s users, companies have engaged in a bidding war to acquire TikTok, including Triller Inc itself but ByteDance has denied any negotiations with the latter firm.

The brain behind Triller, Ryan Kavanaugh, and Bobby Sarnevesht are men who are driven to make a statement with the success of their company. As the founder of Relativity Media LLC, Kavanaugh reportedly led the company to file for bankruptcy twice both in 2015 as well as in 2018 and Sarnevesht was part of the leadership of Bay Area Surgical Management, a medical firm that lost a lawsuit worth $37.4 million to Aetna Inc.

TikTok Rival Triller to Consider IPO Option with SPAC

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