U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that a deal to divest TikTok from its Chinese parent company will get done before the April 5 deadline. While several bids for TikTok have been reported, there is very little clarity about which direction this might go.
On January 17, the Supreme Court unanimously decided to uphold the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, otherwise known as the TikTok ban. The act requires TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest its ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Failure to divest will result in the app being banned in the U.S.
On his first day in office, Trump (perhaps illegally) signed an executive order extending the deadline to figure out a divestment plan for TikTok by 75 days. He encouraged Tiktok’s U.S. partners to keep the app running and directed the Department of Justice to not take any action or enforce any penalties on conduct that occurred during or prior to this period. TikTok has remained online since and reappeared in app stores around mid-February.
Just before taking office, Trump said on Truth Social that his “initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase we so choose.” It’s unclear whether by “U.S.” Trump meant that the U.S. government should have a 50% stake in TikTok or that an American company should own half. In early February, Trump suggested that an American sovereign wealth fund — which he directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to establish — could partially own TikTok.
In February, reports came out that Trump had assigned Vice President JD Vance to lead the U.S. government’s role in the bidding process. Vance’s office has been proactively soliciting bids and providing feedback on the offers, according to one of the bidders, Reid Rasner. In a mid-March interview with NBC News, Vance said he expects an outline of the deal will be completed by the April 5 deadline. Again, there is a lot of ambiguity here — it’s unclear whether Vance is solely interfacing with U.S. bidders, or whether he is also liaising with ByteDance or Chinese officials to determine the feasibility of various bids. Not only does ByteDance need to agree to the sale, but the Chinese government would need to approve the export of TikTok’s coveted algorithm (if the algorithm is part of the deal).
Up until this past week, Trump has remained fairly quiet on TikTok. On March 26, he said that he’d be willing to extend the deadline and that he might reduce tariffs on China as part of the deal. A reduction in tariffs could possibly be in exchange for China’s release of the algorithm. ByteDance argued as part of its defense before the Supreme Court that the Chinese government would block the sale of the algorithm — but TikTok is not a redline issue for China (unlike Taiwan, for example), so even if it’s a hard sell, it’s likely on the table.
On March 30, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that “we have a lot of potential buyers.” This is true. The interesting part is that these bidders have very different visions for what TikTok U.S. could look like.
Oracle, who bid on TikTok when Trump first attempted to ban the app in 2020, is reportedly a frontrunner. Oracle currently provides cloud infrastructure for TikTok’s U.S. operations. And Larry Ellison, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, is a friend and ally of Trump. The deal could either give Oracle oversight just over American data, or oversight over both the data and the algorithm. ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the company.
Another — possibly connected — leading offer to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations comes from ByteDance’s major non-Chinese investors. Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic are leading discussions to up their stake in a new spin off company for TikTok U.S., diluting Chinese ownership below the 20% threshold stipulated in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Oracle would continue to oversee data collection in the U.S.
Trump mentioned in January that Microsoft was in talks with the administration to buy TikTok. But Microsoft bid on TikTok in 2020 and was denied. And the Trump administration recently advanced an antitrust probe into the tech giant.
Another bid comes from billionaire Frank McCourt, who hopes to buy TikTok for around $20 billion. His consortium is not interested in acquiring the original algorithm, but rather envisions giving users greater control over their data and how they engage with the content on the app. This entails significant changes to the business model and underlying technology.
Similarly, Perplexity, an American web search engine, wants to rebuild the TikTok algorithm from the ground up and make it open source. Reports from January suggest that Perplexity is willing to give the U.S. government a 50% stake in a merger between Perplexity and TikTok’s U.S. business. The initial public offering would be around $300 billion. It’s unclear how much Perplexity is bidding — for reference, the company is currently trying to double its valuation from $9 billion to $18 billion.
Finally, Reid Rasner, a billionaire from Wyoming, submitted a $47.45 billion bid for TikTok. Rasner wants a complete cut from ByteDance to protect national security. He also wants to acquire the algorithm because he believes that without it TikTok “is not worth a dollar.” Rasner’s plan would pay TikTok users to use their data and donate 5% of the bid to establish a sovereign wealth fund for the U.S. Rasner is an avid Trump supporter — on Instagram he posted an image indicating that Wyoming, as opposed to “woke” California, should be the homebase for TikTok U.S.
The scope of bids that are on the table make the future of TikTok seem majorly unresolved. Over the next few days, we’ll hopefully get answers to the following questions — will the algorithm be sold along with the app, will ByteDance continue to have a stake and will the U.S. government get a kickback.
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