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Who might buy TikTok as ban deadline looms? Amazon joins bidders Trump TikTok deal: Who might own the app and how would it work?
(2 months later)
President Donald Trump has for a third time extended the deadline that would have required TikTok to be sold or face a ban in the US. President Donald Trump says a deal to find a new owner for TikTok in the United States is done.
A bipartisan law passed by Congress last year mandates TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sell the app. The future of the app and access to it for people in the US was plunged into uncertainty. Politicians passed a law requiring TikTok to be banned in the country unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
The platform 'went dark' for a day in January after the law took effect, until Trump intervened issuing consecutive 75-day postponements, and now a 90 day extension until September. But Trump vowed to save it, and since his inauguration he has delayed deadlines for TikTok's sale and dropped names of companies and celebrities who could buy it.
The US government has said TikTok poses a threat to national security because Chinese authorities might access its vast trove of user data, which Beijing denies. Now his administration has given details of how it says the sale will work - though they have yet to be confirmed by China.
Trump once supported a ban, but changed his position in part because of the role he believes it played in his second election victory: "I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points", he said in December. Here's what we know about the future of TikTok in the US.
But a key Democrat lawmaker has criticised continued postponements. Why did the US want to ban TikTok?
Senator Mark Warner accused Trump of "flouting the law and ignoring its own national security findings about the risks posed by a PRC [People's Republic of China] controlled TikTok". Before we get to what will happen next, a reminder of how we got here.
If there is no deal, will TikTok be banned? US officials and lawmakers have for years accused ByteDance of being linked to the Chinese government.
If no deal is reached by 17 September, the app could once again face a US ban and be pulled from app stores. Many have cited national security concerns over the app, claiming that it could be forced by Beijing to hand over data about its US users, who number 170 million, according to TikTok.
And the executive orders extending the time to find a buyer do not overturn the sell-or-ban law passed by Congress and upheld by the US Supreme Court. TikTok and ByteDance deny that - nonetheless similar concerns have also prompted bans and restrictions in other countries around the world.
So a ban remains at least a legal possibility. Is TikTok really a danger to the West?
President Donald Trump has said he would "like to see TikTok remain alive". In April 2024, US Congress passed a bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law, giving ByteDance nine months to find a US-approved buyer or see TikTok shut down across the US.
Who might buy TikTok? TikTok filed multiple unsuccessful legal challenges against the law, calling it "unconstitutional" and claiming it would have a "staggering" impact on free speech by censoring its US users.
President Trump has previously said "multiple investors" were closing in on a deal. Trump was then elected - and the search for a new owner began, helped by the initial deadline being repeatedly extended.
He also suggested the US could offer a deal where China agrees to approve a TikTok sale in exchange for relief from US tariffs on Chinese imports. What deal has been announced - and how will it work?
But it is unlikely that TikTok's parent company will sell without the blessing of the Chinese government. President Trump's TikTok deal will see TikTok's algorithm - the technology that determines what users see in their feed - copied and retrained on US user data, according to White House officials.
Several potential buyers have cropped up in reports. A new recommendation system, which has been viewed as the most valuable part of the app, will be audited by US tech giant Oracle, and operated by a new joint venture involving US investors in order to meet requirements for the app's sale.
Amazon has put in a last-minute offer to the White House to acquire TikTok, according to the BBC's US partner CBS. Amazon declined to comment. Oracle already stores TikTok's American user data on its US-based servers as part of an existing agreement designed to ease lawmaker's security concerns.
Trump has said he would be open to selling TikTok to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as well as Elon Musk, although the latter said he had no intention of buying. But the company will now secure the entirety of the US version of TikTok - inspecting and re-developing its algorithm on content and data shared by US users.
Other potential buyers include billionaire Frank McCourt, together with Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary - a celebrity investor on Shark Tank, the US version of Dragons' Den. The government believes this is enough to meet the requirements for a sale of the app set out by the 2024 law.
Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, said in a post on X last month that he had joined Mr McCourt's bid. Private equity firm Silver Lake, which has investments in companies including Manchester City football club owners City Football Group, was revealed to also be involved in the deal.
The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - has also said he's looking to buy TikTok as part of a group of investors. White House officials said the new joint venture controlling the app would be seeking patriotic investors and board members experienced in cybersecurity to oversee its operations.
Tim Stokely, the British founder of OnlyFans, has also to offered to buy TikTok under his recently re-launched company, Zoop. A huge range of public figures ranging from OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely to star YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - have been touted as potential investors in the past.
Computing giant Microsoft, private equity giant Blackstone, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and search engine Perplexity AI are also reportedly in the running for a stake. President Trump has said that the plans were approved by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a call on 19 September.
The White House has reportedly considered an option whereby ByteDance would keep ownership of TikTok's algorithm, but lease it to a new entity operating the video-sharing app within the US. ByteDance and TikTok have not commented on the deal but in a statement thanked Xi and Trump "for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States".
Buyers circle and rumours swirl as TikTok sale deadline looms White House outlines TikTok deal that would give US control of algorithm
MrBeast is the most popular YouTuber in the world with more than 300m subscribers What has China said?
What other platforms could TikTok users use instead? Beijing has been much more guarded than Washington.
"The Chinese government respects the wishes of the enterprise, and welcomes it to carry out commercial negotiations in accordance with market rules to reach a solution compliant with China's laws and regulations, and strikes a balance of interests," it said on Saturday.
It is unlikely that TikTok's parent company would sell its prize app without the blessing of the Chinese government.
In the US version of the app, a White House official said ByteDance would make up less than 20% of its new ownership under a "qualified divestiture".
A White House official said they expected China to start taking steps to make the deal happen.
These would include issuing an export license for TikTok's algorithm - once Trump has signed an executive order to institute a 120-day pause to the law's deadline for a sale or ban.
Trump has said he would meet Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, scheduled to begin at the end of October in South Korea.
What's in the TikTok deal for China?
What does it mean for US TikTok users?
Watch: Can young Americans live without TikTok?Watch: Can young Americans live without TikTok?
TikTok says it has 170 million US users who spent - on average - 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024. According to TikTok, its US users spent 51 minutes per day on average on the app in 2024.
Experts say rivals such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts could benefit if Trump's efforts to broker a sale of TikTok don't succeed. When it looked like it might go dark in the US, experts said rivals such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts stood to benefit.
"Chief marketing officers who we've spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok," said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research company Forrester. But even if the sale goes ahead it's not guaranteed TikTok will enjoy the same success as in the past.
Other potential winners include Amazon's Twitch, which made its name by hosting livestreams - a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though its other content is expanding, too. "The real question has always been whether the algorithm would come with the sale, and it looks like it sort of will," said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at market research company Forrester.
Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu - known as RedNote among its US users - have also seen rapid growth in the US and the UK. But given that algorithm is set to be retrained on US user data, Ms Chickering said TikTok's recommendation engine was likely to feel different to users - and that could be a "sticking point".
Additional reporting by Liv McMahon & Imran Rahman-Jones "Given the potential players involved in this deal, if the algorithmic scales tip too far toward one political direction, it could send many current TikTok users to other platforms - just like we saw happen with Twitter/X," she said.
"The jury's out on whether this new, US-only, app will be a true replicate of the old one, with just as powerful of an algorithm and experience."
Additional reporting by Tom Gerken & Imran Rahman-Jones