TikTok is slated to be banned in the US if a potential buyer does not take it over before a congressional deadline on Sunday.
In April, Congress ruled that the popular video-sharing app must sell its US assets that currently belong to Chinese parent company ByteDance due to national security concerns. The US Supreme Court unanimously upheld April’s law on Friday. President Joe Biden decided he would not implement the ban, leaving it up to President-elect Donald Trump, whose inauguration is set for Monday.
Despite trying to ban TikTok during his first term in office, Trump has expressed a change of heart due to a surge of support from young voters in the middle of his 2024 campaign. Since then, he has promised to “save” the social media platform through its exact modus operandi remains unclear. On Friday, he wrote in the Circle of Truth that his decision “will be made in the not-too-distant future, but I need time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”
On Saturday, the president-elect told NBC News that he expects to “most likely” implement a 90-day reprieve from a possible ban when he is sworn into office.
While TikTok US users fear the end of the app, there remains a glimmer of hope from potential buyers about the potential merger with a US search engine.
Is TikTok’s ban getting a 90-day extension?
Trump will “very likely” put a 90-day deadline on the next TikTok ban when he’s president, he told NBC News.
The 90-day hold will give his new administration time to find a solution.
“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at,” Trump said in a phone interview Saturday with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker. “The 90-day extension is something that will most likely be done because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation.”
Can TikTok join Perplexity AI?
US tech company Perplexity AI made a bid on Saturday for ByteDance to merge its search engine with TikTok US, according to Reuters.
The merger would create a new entity while allowing most of ByteDance’s current investors to retain their equity stakes and save the app’s US presence, Reuters reported. The company reportedly believes the Chinese company will be more open to a merger than a sale.
Perplexity AI executives believe the merger would add video content to its search technology, which uses large language models and tools such as OpenAI and Meta Platforms’ open source model, Llama.
USA TODAY has reached out to ByteDance and Perplexity AI for comment.
Who owns TikTok?
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a private global company based in Beijing founded by Chinese entrepreneurs. According to TikTok, about 60% of the parent company is owned by global institutional investors, 20% by the company’s founders and 20% by employees.
TikTok, whose global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, is not a China-based company as the app is not even available for use in the Asian country. Douyin, which is another platform owned by ByteDance, is TikTok’s counterpart in mainland China.
Why is TikTok banned?
TikTok’s ban stems from concerns that US officials have about the level of control the Chinese government has over the company.
The Justice Department’s two main concerns with the platform are the possibility that the Chinese government could decide to dictate what content users watch to influence public opinion, and the country potentially collecting the sensitive data of millions of US users of the app.
Is MrBeast buying TikTok?
YouTube star MrBeast, whose real name is James “Jimmy” Donaldson, shared an X post earlier this week saying: “Ok ok I’m going to buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned.” The YouTuber, who Forbes reported earns $84 million a year, then posted a follow-up X tweet saying, “I’ve had so many billionaires reach out to me since I posted this, let’s see if I can let’s do this.”
While MrBeast’s remarks remain murky, McCourt announced last week that his Project Liberty initiative made a formal offer for Bytedance. Liberty Project President Tomicah Tillemann said in a statement that the organization would not publicly disclose the amount of the offering, however, the group previously disclosed that it secured $20 billion in verbal commitments from an unnamed group of investors willing to buy TikTok.
Who can buy TikTok?
Musk, MrBeast, investor and “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty have been the names primarily linked to the acquisition of TikTok.
Other names that have been rumored as possible buyers include Bobby Kotick, former CEO of video game publisher Activision; Walmart CEO Doug McMillon; Microsoft; and video sharing platform Rumble.
Could Elon Musk buy TikTok?
Although Musk has not publicly announced an intention to buy TikTok, he denounced the ban on the platform in April.
“In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the US, even though such a ban could benefit the X platform,” Musk wrote in an X post. “To do so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. This is not what America stands for.”
Musk, who along with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy was appointed by Trump to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force to cut government spending, has experience buying and owning a social media platform after bought X (formerly Twitter) in October. 2022.
Chinese officials have also mentioned Musk and working with the Trump administration when discussing contingency plans for a TikTok ban, Bloomberg reported. Musk has previously met with Chinese leaders and has been supportive of them and the country, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
When asked about Musk’s potential acquisition of TikTok, a representative for the platform told the WSJ, “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
Is Frank McCourt or Kevin O’Leary buying TikTok?
McCourt and O’Leary are also among the rumored potential buyers.
O’Leary could be one of the investors Project Liberty has hinted at after he confirmed he would join McCourt in a plan to buy TikTok.
Kotick, McMillon, Rumble and Microsoft remain possibilities to buy TikTok
Kotick is a potential buyer of TikTok as he has previously spoken with ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming about buying the platform, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2024.
Rumble offered to buy TikTok in March 2024 with the company saying it was “ready to join a consortium with other parties” to buy the app, Forbes reported. Neither Rumble nor CEO Chris Pavlovski have disclosed details about the offer, the paper said.
Walmart and Microsoft will return to the negotiating table to buy TikTok after the companies proposed a bid in 2020 to buy the US arm of the platform. McMillon and Walmart also joined a bid with Oracle to take over TikTok’s US operations in 2020, but ByteDance was granted an injunction, halting Trump’s planned ban and ultimately scuttling the deal.
Since then, McMillon hosted the ByteDance founder in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2023, The New York Post reported, citing sources close to the situation.
Contributing: Mike Snider, Greta Cross, Clare Mulroy, Maureen Groppe & Rebecca Morin, USA TODAY
