Who might buy TikTok as ban deadline looms? Amazon joins bidders

President Donald Trump says he is “very close” to brokering a deal to find a buyer for TikTok, which faces a US ban if its Chinese owner does not sell the app by the weekend.

A bipartisan law passed by Congress last year mandates TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sell the app.

The platform ‘went dark’ for a day in January in the US after the law took effect, until Trump intervened and delayed the ban until 5 April.

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.

Speaking on Air Force One on Thursday, Trump said “multiple investors” were closing in on a deal.

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.

Several potential buyers have cropped up in reports.

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.

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.

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.

Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, said in a post on X last month that he had joined Mr McCourt’s bid.

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.

Tim Stokely, the British founder of OnlyFans, has also to offered to buy TikTok under his recently re-launched company, Zoop.

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.

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.

If no deal is reached by 5 April, the app could once again face a US ban and be pulled from app stores.

Trump signed an executive order in January, which only delayed TikTok’s ban by 75 days.

His order did not overturn the ban on the app passed into law by Congress and upheld by the US Supreme Court.

Trump could allow the law to stand, but ask the Department of Justice to continue to ignore it.

The government would effectively be telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for allowing people to download TikTok on to their devices.

TikTok returned to Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store in February, after the companies were reportedly told they would not face consequences for hosting it.

Trump has also said he would “probably” extend the deadline, if needed.

TikTok says it has 170 million US users who spent – on average – 51 minutes per day 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.

“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.

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.

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.