In 2009, long before Jeff Yass became a Republican megadonor, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, invested in a Chinese real estate start-up that boasted a sophisticated search algorithm.

2009年，杰夫·亚斯还不是共和党的大金主时，他的公司海纳国际集团投资了一家中国房地产初创企业，它号称拥有复杂巧妙的搜索算法。

The company, 99Fang, promised to help buyers find their perfect homes. Behind the scenes, employees of a Chinese subsidiary of Mr. Yass’s firm were so deeply involved, records show, that they conceived the idea for the company and handpicked its chief executive. They said in one email that he was not the company’s “real founder.”

那家名为九九房的公司曾承诺帮助买家找到他们的理想住房。文件显示，亚斯公司旗下的一家中国子公司的员工曾在幕后深入参与了九九房的创立，公司的想法是他们的，他们也为九九房精心挑选了一名首席执行官。他们在一封电子邮件中写道，首席执行官不是公司的“真正创始人”。

As a real estate venture, 99Fang ultimately fizzled. But it was significant, according to a lawsuit by former Susquehanna contractors, because of what it spawned. They say that 99Fang’s chief executive — and the search technology — resurfaced at another Susquehanna venture: ByteDance.

作为一个房地产网站，九九房以失败告终。但据海纳的前承包商提起的诉讼，这家公司意义重大是因为后来发生的事情。诉方称，九九房的首席执行官及其搜索技术后来出现在了海纳投资的另一家企业——字节跳动。

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is now one of the world’s most highly valued start-ups, worth $225 billion, according to CB Insights, a firm that tracks venture capital. ByteDance is also at the center of a tempest on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the company as a threat to American security. They are considering a bill that could break up the company. The man picked by Susquehanna to run the housing site, Zhang Yiming, became ByteDance’s founder.

字节跳动是TikTok的所有者，据跟踪风险投资的公司CB Insights的数据，字节跳动目前的估值高达2250亿美元，是世界上估值最高的初创企业之一。字节跳动也处于国会山一场风暴的中心，一些立法者认为该公司对美国的国家安全构成威胁。他们正在考虑一项可能会将公司拆分的法案。被海纳选中管理九九房的张一鸣后来成了字节跳动的创始人。

Court documents reveal a complex origin story for ByteDance and TikTok. The records include emails, chat messages and memos from inside Susquehanna. They describe a middling business experiment, founder-investor tension and, ultimately, a powerful search engine that just needed a purpose.

法庭文件揭示了字节跳动和TikTok复杂的起源故事。这些文件包括来自海纳内部的电子邮件、聊天短信和备忘录。它们描述的情况包括一个失败的商业实验、创始人与投资者之间的紧张关系，以及一个最后只差找到用途的强大搜索引擎。

The records also show that Mr. Yass’s firm was more deeply involved in TikTok’s genesis than previously known. It has been widely reported in The New York Times and elsewhere that Susquehanna owns roughly 15 percent of ByteDance, but the documents make clear that the firm was no passive investor. It nurtured Mr. Zhang’s career and signed off on the idea for the company.

文件还显示，在TikTok的诞生过程中，海纳的参与比之前所知的更为深入。《纽约时报》和其他媒体都曾广泛报道过，海纳国际集团拥有字节跳动约15%的股份，但这些法庭文件明确地表明，海纳并不是被动的投资者。它扶持了张一鸣事业上的成功，批准了他成立字节跳动的想法。

Susquehanna has tens of billions of dollars at stake as lawmakers debate whether TikTok gives its Chinese owner the power to sow discord and spread disinformation among Americans. As Susquehanna’s founder, Mr. Yass potentially has billions riding on the outcome of the debate.

随着国会议员们对TikTok是否赋予其中国所有者在美国人中制造混乱、传播虚假信息的权利展开辩论，海纳数百亿美元的利益面临风险。对海纳国际集团的创始人亚斯来说，数十亿美元的潜在利益将取决于这场辩论的结果。

Mr. Yass, a former professional poker player, is also the single largest donor this election cycle, with more than $46 million in contributions through the end of last year, according to OpenSecrets, a research group that tracks money in politics.

亚斯曾是职业扑克牌玩家，也是这个选举周期捐款最多的个人，据跟踪政治资金的研究机构OpenSecrets的数据，截至去年年底，他的捐款已超过4600万美元。

Susquehanna has turned over Mr. Yass’s emails as part of the case, according to court documents. But those emails are not included in the trove that was made public, leaving Mr. Yass’s personal involvement in ByteDance’s formation unknown.

据法庭文件，海纳国际集团已将亚斯的电子邮件已作为本案的一部分提交给了法院。但这些电子邮件不在公布的文件之中，让人无法知道亚斯个人在字节跳动创建中的参与情况。

海纳国际集团在宾夕法尼亚州的办公室。 这家公司最早在十多年前投资了字节跳动。

The records surfaced in a Pennsylvania lawsuit. Former Susquehanna contractors accuse the firm of taking cutting-edge search technology to ByteDance without compensating them. Susquehanna denies the accusations, saying that ByteDance did not receive any technology from the real estate site. “These claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a company spokesman said.

这些文件来自于宾夕法尼亚州的一场官司。海纳以前的承包商起诉该公司将他们最前沿的搜索技术交给了字节跳动，但没有补偿他们。海纳否认了这些指控，称字节跳动没有从房地产网站九九房获得过任何技术。“这些说法毫无根据，我们将全力为自己辩护，”海纳的一名发言人说。

The records were unsealed this month. After The Times downloaded them and began asking questions, lawyers for Susquehanna said that the documents had been inadvertently made public. The judge resealed them on Tuesday.

这些法庭记录是在本月启封的。时报下载了这些文件，并开始了采访。那之后，海纳的律师们说，文件是无意中被公开的。法官已于周二重新将它们封存起来。

Lawyers for both parties declined to comment. ByteDance, Mr. Yass and Mr. Zhang either did not answer questions or did not respond to messages seeking comment.

双方的律师都拒绝对本文置评。字节跳动、亚斯、张一鸣或没有回答记者的提问，或未回复置评请求。

While the two sides dispute the origins of ByteDance’s technology, the documents make clear that the company itself emerged from 99Fang’s real estate efforts. “Our search, image processing, recommendation, etc. are very powerful,” Mr. Zhang wrote in a 2012 email, “but these things applied to real estate are very limited.”

虽然此案双方对字节跳动技术的来源提出异议，但法庭文件清楚地显示，公司本身是从九九房的房地产业务中脱胎而来的。“我们的搜索、图像处理、推荐等功能都非常强大，”张一鸣在2012年的一封电子邮件中写道，“但这些东西在房地产领域的应用非常有限。”

Rather than match buyers with homes, Mr. Zhang laid out plans that year to match users with lighthearted content, developing prototype pages called Funny Pictures and Pretty Babes. He described the new project as a “brother enterprise” that would share technology with the real estate site.

张一鸣在同一年提出了为网络用户提供轻松内容，而不是为买家匹配住房的计划。他开发了两个原型应用程序，一个是搞笑囧图，另一个是内涵段子。他将新项目描述为九九房的“兄弟企业”，并将与那个房地产网站共享技术。

Years later, a director for Susquehanna in China would write to a colleague that the housing site deal had led to “the birth of ByteDance.”

多年后，海纳国际集团中国子公司的一名董事曾向同事写道，那个房地产网站促成了“字节跳动的诞生”。

How It All Started

一切是这样开始的

In 2005, Susquehanna created the Chinese subsidiary, SIG China, to invest in start-up companies.

2005年，海纳国际集团为投资中国初创公司成立了中国子公司海纳亚洲。

One early investment was Kuxun, a portal that focused on job listings, housing advertisements and travel. Mr. Zhang, then in his early 20s, was the site’s technical director, and SIG China viewed him as a promising talent.

酷讯是它的一个早期投资项目，该门户网站的重点是招聘信息、住房广告和旅游。当时20岁出头的张一鸣是该网站的技术总监，海纳亚洲认为他是个有前途的人才。

He left the company for a job with Microsoft. But in 2009, as SIG China prepared to spin off Kuxun’s real estate section into its own venture, the investment firm lured Mr. Zhang back and installed him as the chief executive of the new company, 99Fang.

他却从公司跳槽去了微软。但2009年，海纳准备将酷讯的房地产部门分拆成一个独立企业时，这家投资公司又把张一鸣挖了回来，并任命他为新公司九九房的首席执行官。

“We have recruited the top engineer of the housing channel back to lead the technical team,” SIG China employees wrote in an internal memo.

“我们已经重新聘请了住房频道的最高工程师来领导（九九房）技术团队，”海纳亚洲的员工在内部备忘录中写道。

But the relationship between Mr. Zhang and SIG China was complicated, records show.

但记录显示，张一鸣与海纳亚洲的关系颇为复杂。

He described himself as 99Fang’s founder but owned few shares, the documents say.

文件显示，他自称是九九房的创始人，但只有少量的公司股份。

In 2011, Tim Gong, an SIG China managing director, vented about Mr. Zhang amid an apparent dispute over shares. “Kuxun and 99Fang were both NOT founded by him,” Mr. Gong wrote to a colleague. The full context is not clear, but he ends the message by seeming to suggest parting ways with Mr. Zhang: “We shall let him go.”

2011年，海纳亚洲的董事总经理龚挺曾在一场看来与股权有关的纠纷中对张一鸣表示不满。“酷讯和九九房都不是他创立的，”龚挺在给同事的信中写道。具体情况不明，但他在信的结尾处似乎建议与张一鸣分道扬镳：“我们要让他走人。”

张一鸣2020年摄于加利福尼亚州。

By 2012, real estate no longer excited Mr. Zhang. After studying the life of Apple founder Steve Jobs, he said in an email to SIG China, he realized that he needed a career change. Social media opportunities were sprouting up as people bought cellphones. He suggested that 99Fang’s search technology needed a different purpose.

到2012年时，张一鸣已不再对房地产感兴趣。学习了苹果创始人乔布斯的生平后，他在给海纳亚洲的电子邮件中写道，他认识到他需要改变职业。随着人们大量购买手机，社交媒体行业的机会不断涌现。他建议需要给九九房的搜索技术找不同的用途。

The degree to which Susquehanna steered Mr. Zhang’s career over the course of years has never been part of the ByteDance story. In a Chinese-language blog post, Joan Wang, an SIG employee, has written about meeting Mr. Zhang at a coffee shop to discuss what would become ByteDance. He mapped it out on a napkin, she wrote.

海纳在多大程度上引导了张一鸣多年来的职业生涯从来不是字节跳动故事的一部分。海纳亚洲员工王琼曾在一篇博客文章中写了她在一家咖啡馆与张一鸣见面，讨论后来成为字节跳动公司的故事。张一鸣把产品原型构想画在一张餐巾纸上，她写道。

Internally, in an investment memo, she wrote that Mr. Zhang sought Susquehanna’s “understanding and permission” to leave 99Fang and create a new company.

王琼在内部的投资备忘录中写道，张一鸣曾寻求海纳的“理解和许可”离开九九房，去创建一家新公司。

‘Pretty Babes’ and a Big Gamble

内涵段子和一场豪赌

Pivots in focus are common in venture investing. Less common is a change as dramatic as shifting from real estate to social media. The most successful start-ups — Facebook, WhatsApp, Alibaba — evolved in scope but not drastically in purpose.

转变业务焦点在风险投资中很常见。不太常见的是从房地产转向社交媒体的这种巨变。最成功的初创企业（Facebook、WhatsApp、阿里巴巴等）的业务范围都发生过多次变化，但都没有过目标上的巨变。

By March 2012, court documents show, the nascent project had a new name: Xiangping, which roughly translates to “share comments.”

法庭文件显示，这个未成熟的项目到2012年3月时已有了一个新名子：享评。

Mr. Zhang created a prototype app, Pretty Babes, that users seemed to enjoy, the memo read. Fragments of Xiangping’s early existence survive in archived form on the internet.

投资备忘录显示，张一鸣研发的一款名叫“内涵段子”的原型应用程序似乎受到了用户的喜欢。互联网档案中仍可找到享评早期的部分模样。

In the investment memo, Ms. Wang wrote that by selecting content for users, Xiangping could engineer virality and increase “stickiness.” Rather than have users search for what they wanted, in other words, the new company would select it for them.

王琼在投资备忘录中写道，通过为用户选择内容，享评能启动病毒式的传播，增加用户“粘性”。换句话说，新公司不是让用户去找他们想看的东西，而是为他们做出选择。

“Social network technology will be used to track user behavior, predict user interest, and build relevancy and recommendation engine,” the memo reads.

“社交网络技术将用于跟踪用户行为、预测用户兴趣，并构建相关性和推荐引擎，”备忘录写道。

ByteDance’s technology has evolved, but TikTok still delivers videos that users want to see and share. That curation is at the heart of the effort to ban TikTok. Some lawmakers fear having such a powerful algorithm in the hands of a company with Chinese ownership.

虽然字节跳动的技术已有多次改进，但TikTok仍向用户提供他们想看、想分享的视频。为用户挑选信息是国会禁止 TikTok努力的核心所在。一些立法者对如此强大的算法掌握在一家中国拥有所有权的公司手中表示担心。

In 2012, SIG China valued the start-up at about $9 million and invested a little over $2 million. Its lawyers said in court documents that it had since “contributed hundreds of millions in further investments.”

海纳亚洲2012年对张一鸣初创公司的估值大约是900万美元，并向其投了略高于200万美元的资金。海纳的律师在提交给法庭的文件中写道，那之后公司“进一步投了数亿美元”。

From there, the company’s story is well known. It rebranded itself as ByteDance and bought the lip sync app Musical.ly, which it used as the foundation for TikTok. By 2018, ByteDance had become one of the world’s most valuable private technology companies.

后来的故事众所周知。那家初创公司将名字改为字节跳动，收购了对口型假唱应用程序Musical.ly，在其基础上开发了TikTok。到2018年时，字节跳动已成为全球估价最高的未上市科技公司之一。

Susquehanna’s bet on an unproven founder is not rare. What’s unique about ByteDance is that it paid off so well.

海纳押注未经检验的创始人也非罕见。但字节跳动的独特之处是回报如此之高。

“Part of it is they saw something,” said Steven Kaplan, who researches private equity and venture capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Part of it is they got lucky.”

“部分原因是他们看到了某些潜力，”在芝加哥大学布斯商学院研究私募股权和风险投资的史蒂文·卡普兰说。“部分原因是他们运气好。”

What’s Next?

接下来会怎样

The Pennsylvania court case may ultimately go before a jury, but no trial date has been set.

宾夕法尼亚法院的这个案子最终也许会由陪审团来裁定，但庭审日期目前尚未确定。

The House passed a bill in March that could force the sale of TikTok, and a Senate vote could come as soon as next week.

众议院已在今年3月通过了一项可能会强迫字节跳动出售TikTok的法案，参议院最快可能在下周对法案进行投票。

支持禁止TikTok法案的众议员迈克·加拉格尔今年3月在国会山。

In addition to his campaign donations, Mr. Yass has funded a major advocacy drive through the libertarian Club for Growth to prevent the banning of TikTok. That has shown mixed results so far, as many House members backed by the group voted for a ban.

除了竞选捐款外，亚斯也为自由论者的增长俱乐部开展防止TikTok被禁的大型倡导活动提供了大量资金。该活动到目前为止的结果好坏参半，许多得到增长俱乐部支持的众议院议员对禁令投了支持票。

As with many pieces of legislation, former President Donald J. Trump is a wild card in the bill’s passage. As president, he tried to force a sale of TikTok. But he has since reversed his stance. He has also acknowledged meeting briefly with Mr. Yass but said that they never discussed TikTok.

与国会正在进行的许多立法一样，前总统特朗普是TikTok禁令是否最终通过的一个不确定因素。他担任总统时曾试图强迫字节跳动出售TikTok，但后来改变了立场。他也承认曾与亚斯短暂会面，但说他们从未讨论TikTok。