Amazon's Last-Minute Bid for TikTok Comes
Digest more
Top News
Impacts
CBS News |
Retail industry analysts say Amazon's interest in TikTok underscores the social app's importance to online retailers, given its ability to drive e-commerce purchases.
Reuters |
Bidders for the short video social media company are piling up, as the weekend deadline for TikTok to find a buyer approaches.
Read more on News Digest
2don MSN
Amazon has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump administration official said Wednesday, in an eleventh-hour pitch as a U.S. ban on the platform is set to go into effect Saturday. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity,
Trump gave China’s ByteDance until Saturday to sell or divest its U.S. TikTok business. A source confirmed to NBC News that the e-commerce giant had made a last-minute pitch.
As TikTok faces down an April 5 deadline, last-minute offers to buy the app have come from Amazon and the founder of OnlyFans, among others.
The Information reports that later today, Trump plans to announce a plan for “TikTok America,” a new company with 50 percent ownership by unnamed new US investors, a one-third stake for existing ByteDance investors, and a 19.9 percent share for ByteDance. It would apparently license TikTok’s algorithm from ByteDance.
However, key parties involved in negotiations on a potential TikTok sale “do not appear to be taking Amazon’s bid seriously,” according to The New York Times.
Explore more
Amazon has made a last-minute bid to buy TikTok as the app nears an April 5 deadline to cut ties with its Chinese owner or face a U.S. ban, according to a New York Times article published on April 2.
Amazon’s surprise bid comes amid a flurry of activity from other interested buyers, including Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone and even a consortium backed by social media influencers like MrBeast. Some appear to have a better shot than others.
Amazon and AppLovin reportedly submitted bids to acquire TikTok, ahead of a U.S. ban set to go into effect Saturday if no deal is reached with the app's Chinese parent company.
Amazon.com has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump administration official said, in an 11th-hour pitch as a U.S. ban on the platform is set to