In January I reported that Trump signed an executive order to delay the TikTok ban for 75 days and give the company time to reach a deal with the US — the major caveat being that Trump wants 50% of the app to be owned by a US company. So who's going to buy half of TikTok?
- Trump told reporters that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok's US operations. He didn't elaborate other than to say that “there's great interest in TikTok” and that there will be “a lot of people bidding on it.” Microsoft and Oracle were in the running to acquire TikTok back in 2020 when Trump first pressured the company to shed its Chinese ownership or face a ban.
- Speaking of Oracle… NPR reported that The White House was in talks with Oracle and a group of investors to take over TikTok's data collection and software updates and continue providing the foundation of TikTok's web infrastructure, which it does now.
- Trump has also said he would be open to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle chairman Larry Ellison buying TikTok as part of a joint venture with the US government.
- Perplexity AI submitted a revised proposal to merge with TikTok in an arrangement that would give the US government up to 50% ownership of the new entity.
- A consortium of American investors including MrBeast, Jesse Tinsley, founder of Employer.com, David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox, and Nathan McCauley, CEO of Anchorage Digital, has raised over $20B for the bid, confirmed by Bloomberg.
- And of course the group known as Project Liberty, led by Frank McCourt and Kevin O'Leary, are still clamoring at the bits to submit a bid to buy TikTok since before the ban even took effect.
Meanwhile TikTok and ByteDance have been remarkably quiet since Trump reinstated the app. Neither company's representatives have issued any public announcement indicating they’re willing to sell half of the app. In fact, ByteDance has repeatedly maintained that it isn’t interested in selling a stake in TikTok; at various points it has even stated that it would rather shut down TikTok in the US than compromise its core technology and algorithm by divesting any portion of its operations — of course, that was back when it still thought it had a chance at defeating the law in appeals court.
There are multiple reports confirming that President Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar‑a‑Lago prior to his inauguration, and Chew was also in attendance at the inauguration itself, but other than that… crickets.