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TikToker Khaby Lame Sells Stake In His Company For Nearly $1 Billion
“What am I gonna do with all this money?” // Illustration by Kate Walker
TikTok creator Khaby Lame has sold his company to financial firm Rich Sparkle Holdings in a $975 million deal.
Why It Hits: Khaby Lame has been the most-followed TikTok creator for nearly four years, demonstrating his enduring global popularity. Any deal that monetizes his likeness and influence was bound to be rich, but an almost ten-figure deal proves that digital creators can command the same payouts as A-list actors and top-tier artists.
Behind The Deal: Khaby Lame is officially the MrBeast of TikTok.
Hong Kong-based Rich Sparkle Holdings is taking a majority stake in Lame’s Step Distinctive Limited in an all-stock deal valued at a whopping $975 million. Lame will remain a controlling shareholder in his company.
The deal gives Rich Sparkle 36 months of exclusive global rights to Lame’s brand, which includes “the rights over his TikTok shop, live stream and short-video commerce planning and programming, brand endorsements, and more,” per THR.
The company also plans to make an AI deepfake version of Lame that “will include his face, voice and behaviors to create multilingual social media content.”
The digital twin will be used to supercharge the number of videos Lame can make and will even be used during livestream shopping events across time zones.
Closing Thoughts: Lame has amassed 360 million followers across his socials through humorous, wordless reaction videos and life-hack clips, content that Rich Sparkle says is perfect for “scale across languages and cultures without translation.” On the e-commerce front, the company expects to generate $4 billion in annual sales from Lame’s name, image, and likeness — a pretty great return on investment.
And with the deal only being exclusive for three years, Lame will have plenty of juice to score another billion-dollar deal soon after… all before he even turns 30.
Next Upload: With the social media age arguably having peaked, expect even more top creators to start looking for a financial exit… earmarking an influencer-as-IP era.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.