TikTok owner ByteDance has launched a women’s fashion website called If Yooou. Pinduoduo launched an e-commerce site in the U.S. called Temu. The two companies are the latest Chinese tech giants to look to crack the international e-commerce market domianted by Amazon.
Mike Kemp | In Pictures | Getty Images
Pinduoduo and TikTok owner ByteDance launched e-commerce websites overseas in the last few months, as they aim to take a crack at selling Chinese products to foreign buyers.
The move sets the two Chinese technology firms up on a collision path with Amazon as they expand internationally.
Pinduoduo, one of China’s biggest e-commerce companies, launched a U.S. shopping site called Temu last month, which sold products in categories from fashion to sports and electronics.
Weeks later, ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered owner of short video app TikTok, launched a fashion website named If Yooou. It is currently shipping to the U.K., Spain, Italy, Germany and France.
Both firms are looking to replicate the success of Shein, the Chinese fast fashion brand that is reportedly now worth $100 billion and has found a large customer base in the U.S. and elsewhere.
ByteDance and Pinduoduo are also relying on cross-border e-commerce — selling Chinese goods to overseas consumers. The U.S. and European markets also present an opportunity for growth.
The push abroad comes at a time where tech giants in China are looking for new avenues of growth as the domestic economy continues to face challenges as a result of Beijing’s strict Covid control policies and deteriorating global macroeconomic environment.
“I think ByteDance and [Pinduoduo] are seizing an opportunity to apply their unique social commerce innovations” to overseas markets, Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC, an e-commerce tech and marketing firm that helps foreign brands sell in China, told CNBC.
Pinduoduo declined to comment for this story, while ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
Pinduoduo and ByteDance e-commerce strategy
Cross-border e-commerce strategies of Pinduoduo, also known as PDD, and ByteDance will be different given their different strengths.
In China, PDD has grown rapidly by building direct links with suppliers and offering big discounts. That could help when it comes to sourcing products to sell in the U.S. and selling them at low prices.
ByteDance, meanwhile, runs TikTok — one of the world’s most popular social media apps.
ByteDance’s algorithms for understanding consumers on Tiktok, “plus the potential to leverage the TikTok ecosystem for commerce, are massive advantages,” Cooke said.
The Chinese firm is not new to e-commerce abroad. In the U.K., it has a shopping feature in TikTok where brands and influencers make videos on products and users can buy those products via the app.
But it hasn’t found success yet.
[Pinduoduo and ByteDance] face low brand recognition and need to build user trust.
Jacob Cooke
CEO of WPIC
Dmonstudio, a women’s fashion site that ByteDance previously launched, shut down after just a few months in operation. And Fanno, another e-commerce site from ByteDance, hasn’t had much traction.
So-called livestream shopping is very popular in China and certain countries in Asia, but it hasn’t really taken off in Europe or the U.S. The Financial Times reported in July that TikTok has abandoned plans to expand its livestream e-commerce strategy in Europe and the U.S.
That could be a reason ByteDance has persisted with an e-commerce shopping website to accompany its TikTok shopping strategy.
ByteDance and Pinduoduo’s attempts to crack the e-commerce market put them in direct competition with U.S. giant Amazon.
PDD’s Temu, which sells products across different categories, will look to challenge Amazon in price.
ByteDance’s If Yooou website will compete with Amazon in fashion, an area the Seattle-headquartered firm has been looking to boost its efforts in.
But both could face a challenge dislodging the dominance of Amazon.
Read more about China from CNBC Pro
One reason is that consumer behavior outside of China tends to favor Amazon’s model, according to Cooke. Customers usually go to Amazon to find specific products or brands that they have already decided to buy, he said.
In contrast, Chinese platforms like Alibaba’s Tmall and JD.com “function more like virtual shopping malls where people are browsing and participating in a digital social experience.”
Pinduoduo and ByteDance “can eat away at Amazon’s share of certain sectors as Shein has done, but ultimately they won’t jeopardize Amazon’s stranglehold on the U.S. e-commerce market,” Cooke said.
“They face low brand recognition and need to build user trust.”
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Figma shares dropped 23% on Monday, cutting into the gains the design software company posted after hitting the market last week.
The stock dropped $27.50 to $94.50 as of midday. That’s down from a close of $122 on Friday.
Figma and top stockholders sold about 37 million shares at $33 per share late Wednesday, yielding around $412 million in proceeds flowing to the company. On Thursday, its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the stock more than tripled.
The initial reception shows a renewed appetite on Wall Street for high-growth technology companies after a historically slow stretch for initial public offerings.
Figma said in an updated IPO prospectus that it expects second-quarter revenue to increase about 40% from a year earlier. But unlike many technology companies that have gone public over the past several years, Figma has regularly posted profits.
Figma’s fully diluted valuation sits at approximately $56 billion, almost triple the amount Adobe agreed to pay in its 2022 acquisition offer. Regulators in the European Union and the U.K. opposed the deal, which the two companies called off in late 2023.
Dylan Field, Figma’s 33-year-old CEO, owns stock in the company worth more than $5 billion even after Monday’s slide.
The logo for Wondery is displayed on a smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon is laying off roughly 110 employees in its Wondery podcast division and the head of the group is leaving as part of a broader reshuffling of the company’s audio unit.
In a Monday note to staffers, Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of audio, Twitch and games, said the company is consolidating some Wondery units under its Audible audiobook and podcasting division. Wondery CEO Jen Sargent is also stepping down from her role, Boom said.
“These changes will not only better align our teams as they work to take advantage of the strategic opportunities ahead but, even more crucially, will ensure we have the right structure in place to deliver the very best experience to creators, customers and advertisers,” Boom wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “Unfortunately, these changes also include some role reductions, and we have notified those employees this morning.”
The move comes nearly five years after Amazon acquired Wondery as part of a push to expand its catalog of original audio content. The podcasting company made a name for itself with hit shows like “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.”
More recently, Wondery signed several lucrative licensing deals with Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, along with Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert.”
Amazon is streamlining “how Wondery further integrates” into the company by separating the teams that oversee its narrative podcasts from those developing “creator-led shows,” Boom wrote.
The narrative podcasting unit will consolidate under Audible, and creator-led content will move to a new unit within Boom’s organization in Amazon called “creator services,” he wrote.
Amazon’s audio pursuits face a heightened challenge from the growing popularity of video podcasts on Alphabet‘s YouTube, which now hosts an increasing number of shows.
Video shows require different discovery, growth and monetization strategies than “audio-first, narrative series,” Boom wrote in the memo to Amazon staffers.
“The podcast landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years,” Boom said.
Baidu will bring its driverless taxis to Europe next year via a partnership with U.S. ridehailing firm Lyft, as the Chinese tech giant looks to expand its autonomous vehicles globally.
The robotaxis will initially be deployed in the U.K. and Germany from 2026 with the aim to have “thousands” of vehicles across Europe in the “following years,” the two companies said.
Lyft has had very little presence in Europe until last week when it closed the acquisition of Germany-based ride hailing company FreeNow, which is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France.
Deployment of the autonomous cars is “pending regulatory approval,” Lyft and Baidu said in a Monday statement. It’s unclear if Lyft will offer Baidu’s robotaxis via the FreeNow app or another product.
The partnership marks a continued push from Baidu to expand its robotaxis to international markets.
Last month, Baidu partnered with Uber to deploy its autonomous cars on the ride-hailing giant’s platform outside the U.S. and mainland China, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, which will launch later this year. The partnership also covers Europe, though a launch date for the region has not yet been disclosed.
In China, Baidu has been operating its own robotaxi service since 2021 in major cities like Beijing, allowing users to hail an Apollo Go car through the app. Meanwhile, for Lyft, the deal could boost the firm’s presence in the region as it looks to take on rivals like Uber and Bolt.
Autonomous vehicles have become a big focus for ride-hailing companies which have looked to partner with companies that are developing the technology for driverless cars.